NATHAN   BURKE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


NATHAN  BURKE 


BY 


MARY  S.    WATTS 


AUTHOR   OF    "THE   TENANTS,"   ETC. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1910 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1910, 
BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  April,  1910.    Reprinted 
April,  twice  ;  June,  1910. 


Ncrfaooti 

J.  8.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


PART   I 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

I.    IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD       .        .  1 
II.    IN   WHICH   MR.   BURKE'S    PEDIGREE    COMES    UNDER 

DISCUSSION 13 

III.  CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME  .        .  25 

IV.  THE  MAIL-BAG 41 

V.       IN   WHICH    WE    HEAR    A    LlTTLE    ANCIENT    HlSTORY      .  59 

VI.    RES  ANGUSTA  DOMI 71 

VII.    IN  WHICH  IS  CONTINUED  THE  CHRONICLE  OF  SMALL 

BEER 85 

VIII.    IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  MAKES  A  NEW  START    .        .  103 

IX.    EXORITUR  CLAMOR  VIRUM 119 

X.       LOG-CABINS-AND-IlARD-ClDER 131 

XL     IN  WHICH  NANCE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD       .        .        .  145 

XII.     THE  MAIL-BAG 156 

XIII.  WHICH  RAMBLES  CONSIDERABLY          ....  173 

XIV.  IN   WHICH    WE    HEAR    A    LITTLE    MORE    ANCIENT    HlS- 

TORY 189 

XV.     WHICH  is  SHORT  AND  RATHER  SERIOUS     .        .        .  202 
XVI.     LONGER    THAN    THE    LAST    AND    SOMEWHAT    MORE 

CHEERFUL  .........  211 

XVII.     IN   WHICH  —  THE    HORSE   BEING   STOLEN  —  NATHAN 

SHUTS  THE  STABLE  DOOR 226 

XVIII.     CONTAINS  SUNDRY  SOCIAL  EXPERIENCES    .         .         .  244 

XIX.     IN  WHICH  THE  BAR  RECEIVES  A  NOTABLE  ADDITION  258 

2 


VI 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

XX. 


XXL 

XXII. 
XXIII. 


I. 
II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 
XIII. 
XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 


CONTAINS   SOME   BUSINESS   AND   A   GOOD  DEAL  OF 

PLEASURE 272 

IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  CASTS  HIS  FIRST  VOTE  .        .  285 

CONTAINS  BOTH  PEACE  AND  WAR      ....  301 

THE  GIRL  I  LEFT  BEHIND  ME 316 

PAET    II 

THE  MAIL-BAG 334 

IN  WHICH  WE  MAKE  SOME  NEW  FRIENDS  AND  MEET 

ONE  OLD  ONE 349 

MATAMOROS  .........  368 

ALARUMS.  EXCURSIONS 383 

IN  WHICH  THE  WARRIOR  LANGUISHES  IN  HIS  TENT  398 
IN  WHICH  THE  FIRST  OHIO  BEHAVES  WELL  UNDER 

FIRE 408 

IN  WHICH  THE  AMERICAN  ARMY  MOVES  ON  TAMPICO  423 

TAMPICO 437 

"AND  THERE  WAS  WAR  AGAIN  — "  ....  448 
CONTAINS  SOME  HITHERTO  UNPRINTED  HISTORY  OF 

THE  MEXICAN  CAMPAIGN 458 

THE  BRIGADE  OF  SAINT  PATRICK  ....  472 

THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH  ....  483 

ARMS  YIELD  TO  THE  TOGA 497 

IN  WHICH  COLONEL  BURKE  GETS  HIS  DISCHARGE  .  510 
"'HERE'S  SORRY  CHEER!'  QUOTH  THE  HEIR  o' 

LYNNE" 529 

IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  RECEIVES  AND  MAKES  VISITS  542 

TIMES  CHANGE  —  AND  WE  CHANGE  WITH  THEM  .  560 

IN  WHICH  WE  HEAR  VARIOUS  NEWS  ....  574 

IN  WHICH  MR.  MARSH'S  WILL  is  OPENED  .  .  585 

IN  WHICH  THE  GRANGER  CLAIMS  ARE  SETTLED  .  599 

EXEUNT  OMNES  615 


INTRODUCTION 

IN  a  part  of  the  book  which  (whatever  the  fate  of  the  rest 
of  it)  hardly  anybody  ever  reads,  it  may  not  be  accounted 
bad  taste  for  the  editor  of  this  history  to  mention  herself,  or 
to  set  down  a  few  personal  recollections.  It  might  have 
been  better  to  say  one  personal  recollection,  for,  as  usually 
happens,  I  find  that  what  I  unthinkingly  supposed  to  be  a 
number  of  consecutive  and  vivid  impressions  resolves,  upon 
a  rigid  analysis,  into  a  single  one,  and  that  rather  hazy,  con 
nected  with  the  inaugural  ceremonies  of  some  governor  of  our 
State,  thirty-five  or  forty  years  ago  —  nearer  forty,  I  fear ! 
My  grandfather  took  me  to  see  the  parade,  a  day  to  be  regis 
tered  with  a  white  stone  —  though  what  governor  it  was, 
and  what  troops,  whether  militia  or  regulars  that  paraded, 
and  why  they  did  it,  and  what  all  the  crowds,  and  hurrahing, 
and  brazen  uproar  of  bands,  and  huge  spectacular  to-do  were 
about  I  knew  no  more  than  the  man  in  the  moon,  no  more 
than  the  other  six-year-old  youngsters,  no  more  than  I  do 
at  this  moment,  and  cared  as  little.  It  was  a  raw,  drizzling 
day  in  January  —  that  being  the  season  humanely  selected 
by  our  authorities  for  all  such  civic  celebrations  in  the  open 
air;  we  stood  on  a  platform  or  hustings,  jammed  in  with  many 
others,  and  I  vaguely  remember  the  proletariat  surging  at 
our  feet.  There  was,  no  doubt,  the  usual  protracted  wait, 
the  usual  dashing  up  and  down  of  important  gentlemen  in 
glorious  regalia  on  horseback,  the  invariable  policemen 
hustling  the  invariable  drunk-and-disorderlies,  the  scurrying 
dogs,  the  bewildered  but  resolute  old  lady  who  will  cross  the 
street  —  no  parade  ever  took  place  without  these  accessories. 
And  then,  at  last,  distant  cheering,  the  Star-Spangled  Banner 
on  a  whole  platoon  of  key-bugles,  and  the  soldiers  wheeling 
into  sight  half  a  dozen  blocks  away.  After  them  open  car 
riages  with  parties  of  portly  complacent  gentlemen,  taking 
off  their  hats  to  the  crowd,  as  if  it  were  a  privilege  to  catch 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

cold  in  such  a  cause  —  one,  in  particular,  who  does  more  smil 
ing  and  bowing  and  is  saluted  with  more  vigorous  roaring 
than  all  the  others  put  together,  as  I  observe.  Then  more 
bands,  and  soldiers,  and  carriages.  And  then,  suddenly, 
with  a  terrifying  outburst  of  sound  all  along  the  street,  some 
one  riding  at  the  head  of  a  small  company  under  a  haggard 
old  faded  dish-clout  of  a  flag  that  whips  tight  around  the  staff 
in  the  cold,  rain-laden  wind.  Why  does  everybody  make 
such  an  appalling  rumpus  ?  And  lo,  my  grandfather,  an  old 
gentleman  of  stately  and  serene  behavior  in  ordinary  circum 
stances,  madly  snatches  off  his  high  shining  hat,  and  sets  it 
on  his  cane,  the  ebony  cane  topped  with  gold  that  men  of  his 
age  carried  in  those  days,  and  waves  it  aloft,  and  bawls: 
" Bravo,  Nat!"  I  remember  with  an  extraordinary  distinct 
ness  how  the  hat  flew  off  and  went  skipping  about  amongst 
the  heads  and  shoulders  of  the  proletariat  until  it  was  rescued 
by  an  agile  member  thereof,  who  shinned  up  one  of  the  posts 
supporting  our  rostrum  to  restore  it.  ''That's  right,  old 
hoss!"  he  said  approvingly  as  my  grandfather  once  more 
brandished  it  in  the  face  of  Heaven,  holding  it  firmly  by  the 
brim  this  time,  however.  "Naw,  I  don't  want  yer  money. 
Give  him  a  good  one!  Yay,  Yay,  Yay!  Fighting  Burke! 
Fighting  Nat  Burke!  Yay,  Yay,  Yay!"  Thus  does  this 
son  of  toil  express  himself  with  vast  energy  and  lungs  of  sole- 
leather.  One  of  us  is  a  little  frightened,  I  believe. 

There  succeeds  an  interval  foggily  associated  in  my  mind 
with  ice-cream;  and  then  we  are  posted  under  some  kind  of 
portico,  and  I  clutch  my  grandfather's  hand  very  tight,  as 
somebody  rides  up  with  his  great  glossy  long-tailed  black 
charger  flinging  the  gravel  of  the  roadway  this  way  and  that 
and  champing  on  two  or  three  bits, with  two  or  three  bridle- 
reins  —  so  they  appear  to  me.  Of  the  ensuing  conversation  I 
recollect  every  syllable  by  some  freak  of  memory.  "Hey, 
General!"  remarked  my  grandfather.  "Hey,  Charlie!" 
returned  the  hero;  and,  looking  down  from  his  elevation, 
uttered  these  winged  words,  "You've  got  your  hat  knocked 
in  on  top."  My  grandfather  took  it  off  and  examined  it  with 
a  rueful  grin.  "  Too  much  enthusiasm,  Nat,"  he  said;  "it's 
no  matter,  this  rain's  ruined  it  anyhow.  Did  it  rain  like 
this  at  Chapultepec? "  General  Burke  says  that  it  didn't 
rain  at  Chapultepec.  It  rained  at  Contreras,  though  — 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

and,  to  my  dismay,  "Whose  little  girl  is  that  ?"  he  asks. 
My  grandfather  explains  that  it  is  John's  little  girl;  where 
upon  I  am  lifted  up  to  the  pommel  of  the  saddle,  and  cling  there 
between  terror  and  delight  while  the  great  man  (who  seems  at 
least  eight  feet  high,  and,  as  his  thick  hair  is  white,  must  be, 
in  my  judgment,  a  hundred  years  old)  looks  at  me  with  his 
steady,  bright  blue  eyes,  and  asks  me  how  old  I  am,  and  how 
far  I  have  got  in  the  Reader? 

And  here,  to  be  strictly  honest,  this  record  must  close;  for 
what  else  the  general  said  and  did  on  the  one  occasion  .when 
I  saw  him,  I  cannot  remember  —  or  cannot  disentangle  what 
I  remember  from  what  I  have  been  told.  I  must  believe  the 
occurrence  was  of  some  importance,  for  I  was  never  allowed 
to  forget  it;  but  upon  these  skeleton  memories  the  older 
people  about  us  —  and  we  ourselves  in  later  years  —  uncon 
sciously  hang  such  a  fabric  of  ideas  and  suggestions  that  a 
childish  recollection  ought  not,  after  all,  to  count  for  much, 
if  it  were  not  that  by  these  feeble  links  the  generations  are 
strung  together;  and  the  merest  wire  of  a  tradition  may  still 
bring  us  some  message  from  the  lonesome  dead. 

General  Burke  was  in  active  legal  practice  up  to  the  time 
of  his  death,  which  occurred  very  suddenly  of  heart  failure, 
during  the  summer  of  1889.  He  was  known  by  his  family  to 
have  been  occupying  his  spare  moments  with  writing  his 
autobiography;  and,  indeed,  was  found  at  the  last  (by  his 
daughter-in-law,  with  whom  and  his  son,  James  S.  Burke,  he 
made  his  home  after  his  wife's  death)  sitting  lifeless  at  his 
desk  with  the  pen  in  his  hand,  a  piece  of  manuscript  before 
him,  and  a  great  quantity  of  the  papers  —  old  letters,  frag 
ments  of  diaries,  newspaper  clippings,  and  so  on  —  which  he 
had  accumulated  to  assist  him  in  this  task,  scattered  about 
the  table.  In  the  haste,  confusion,  and  distress  of  the  dis 
covery  these  were  all  swept  aside  into  drawers  and  portfolios; 
and  it  was  not  until  some  while  afterwards,  when  the  Bar 
Association  and  the  members  of  General  Burke's  commandery 
of  the  Loyal  Legion  proposed  to  publish  their  several  memo 
rials,  that  any  attention  was  given  to  this  collection  of  memo 
randa,  from  which,  being  under  his  own  hand  and  as  it  were 
authoritative,  much  valuable  and  interesting  information 
might  have  been  extracted.  Now,  however,  a  difficulty 


x  INTRODUCTION 

arose:  the  papers  had  got  into  the  greatest  disorder,  the 
manuscript  biography  itself  bore  traces  of  Burke's  evident 
intention  to  revise  and  alter  it,  no  one  knew  in  what  sequence 
the  letters  and  clippings  were  to  be  inserted,  if  at  all,  and 
finally,  even  if  the  general's  plan  had  been  perfectly  clear,  or 
his  work  finished,  it  was  to  be  doubted  whether  —  as  many  of 
the  people  whom  he  mentions  were  still  living,  and  as  he  had 
uttered  his  mind  about  them  and  others  with  entire  freedom 
—  it  would  be  advisable,  or  in  accordance  with  his  desire,  to 
make  the  autobiography,  or  any  part  of  it,  public.  In  the 
end,  as  commonly  happens,  nothing  was  done;  none  of 
Burke's  heirs  felt  disposed  to  take  any  responsibilities;  and 
the  whole  mass  of  writing  lay  neglected  in  its  box,  was  carted 
about  the  country  in  the  course  of  many  changes  of  residence 
or  other  family  upheavals,  tenanted  a  dozen  attics,  and  at  the 
last  was  actually  preserved  from  complete  oblivion  and  per 
haps  destruction  by  a  chance  inquiry  from  the  custodian  of 
our  State  Historical  Society.  He  was  preparing  an  article 
for  one  of  the  monthlies  on  the  Mexican  War;  and  finding  a 
reference  to  General  Burke  as  the  "Hero  of  Chapultepec," 
wanted  to  inform  himself  further.  As  it  turned  out,  however, 
a  minute  examination  of  all  the  printed  and  written  docu 
ments  the  general  had  collected  failed  to  unearth  anything 
about  Chapultepec,  except  a  couple  of  lines  in  his  journal, 
"Sept.  13,  1847.  9  o'clock  at  night.  In  camp  outside  Belen 
Gate,  City  of  Mexico.  Castle  stormed  this  forenoon.  Very 
tired:' 

The  task  of  editing  this  memoir  fell  to  me  as  being  one  of 
the  few  people  who  remembered  its  author,  warmly  inter 
ested  in  the  history  of  the  State,  and,  for  a  final  touch,  a 
follower  of  letters,  accustomed  to  the  preparation  of  matter 
for  print.  If  I  judge  Burke  aright,  nothing  could  have  given 
the  old  gentleman  more  ironic  amusement  than  the  prospect 
of  his  autobiography  committed  to  the  cares  of  a  literary 
woman;  but  I  have  tampered  with  it  as  little  as  possible. 
Somewhere  Burke  quotes  old  George  Marsh  as  saying:  "You 
let  a  man  talk  half  an  hour  and  he'll  tell  you  what  sort  of  a 
fellow  he  is."  Put  a  pen  in  his  hand  and  let  him  write  unre 
servedly,  and  he  will  do  the  same,  I  think.  Nay,  let  him 
write  as  artificially  and  with  as  much  restraint  as  he  chooses, 
still  will  he  write  himself  down  an  ass,  a  sage,  a  coward,  a  hero, 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

a  rogue,  an  honest  man,  in  spite  of  him  !  Burke  wrote  con 
sciously  for  posterity  —  his  own  posterity,  that  is,  and  not 
without  some  posing  ;  witness  his  funny  and  rather  amiable 
little  affectation  of  relating  his  story  (except  when  he  forgets 
or  grows  excited)  in  the  third  person,  like  Caesar.  Yet  no 
man  could  have  felt  a  heartier  hatred  for  the  sham;  and  he 
was  too  shrewd  or  had  too  intimate  a  knowledge  of  the  world 
not  to  realize  that  nothing  he  could  say  would  describe  or 
explain  people  one-half  so  well  as  what  they  said  themselves. 
That,  doubtless,  was  his  reason  for  preserving  the  scores  of 
letters  which  we  found  interspersed  with  his  notes  and  diaries. 
Some  of  them  are  almost  without  interest,  even  to  the  family ; 
and  it  has  been  repeatedly  pointed  out  to  me  that  many  (in 
fact,  most !)  of  George  Ducey's  and  Anne's  are  — ^in  the  sturdy 
phrase  of  one  commentator  —  "no  better  than  so  much  waste 
paper,"  from  which  nobody  on  earth  could  get  either  enter 
tainment  or  instruction.  But  it  seems  to  be  the  plain  duty 
of  the  general's  literary  executor  to  present  them  in  full  as  he 
probably  intended. 

There  are  only  two  or  three  likenesses  in  existence  of  Na 
than  Burke.  Needless  to  say,  he  was  not  an  eight-foot  giant 
in  stature;  a  daguerreotype  taken  about  1852  shows  him  to 
have  been  a  slender  man  not  much  over  medium  height,  with 
brown  or  dark  hair  which  became  very  white  later,  although 
he  did  not  live  to  an  advanced  age.  He  died  August  4,  1889, 
in  his  sixty-eighth  year.  The  head  in  oils  owned  by  Major 
John  V.  Burke  was  executed  by  a  Mrs.  Spencer,  who  had  some 
local  fame,  in  1867;  it  is  not  considered  a  good  likeness  by  the 
family;  and,  although  Burke  never  could  have  been  a  par 
ticularly  good-looking  man,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  his 
face  was  so  smooth  and  characterless  as  the  painting  repre 
sents  it.  In  the  hall  of  the  Pioneer  Society  rooms  there  hangs 
a  tremendous,  panoramic  lithograph  having  for  its  subject 
"  General  Taylor  at  Buena  Vista."  Old  "Rough-and- 
Ready"  is  there  depicted  on  his  famous  white  horse,  postur 
ing  in  the  middle  with  his  brigade-commanders  and  aides 
disposed  throughout  the  landscape  in  a  variety  of  swashbuck 
ling  attitudes.  They  are  all  numbered  and  labeled  in  the 
margin;  and  one  with  a  cocked  hat,  curling  side-whiskers  and 
an  engaging  smile,  caught  in  the  act  of  running  a  Mexican 
through,  is  noted  in  the  index  as  "Col.  N.  Burke."  Un- 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

fortunately,  however,  Burke  was  never  known  to  wear  a 
cocked  hat  or  curly  side-whiskers  in  his  life,  and  moreover  was 
not  a  colonel  at  this  time,  and  did  not  serve  at  Buena  Vista, 
being  several  hundred  miles  off  in  another  part  of  Mexico;  so 
we  may  fairly  set  this  portrait  down  as  not  authentic. 

I  take  the  opportunity  of  expressing  my  thanks  to  Mr.  W. 
P.  Saunders,  Librarian  of  the  State  Society  of  Antiquarian 
Research,  to  Mr.  Lyman  Alcott,  President  of  the  Pioneers' 
Association,  and  to  Mr.  Benjamin  Howard  of  the  Daily 
Press  for  their  kindness  in  allowing  and  assisting  me  to  ex 
amine  the  records  of  their  societies  and  the  back-files  of  the 
Press  ;  to  Mr.  Samuel  Gwynne  Stevens  and  to  Mr.  Horace 
Gwynne,  Jr.,  for  the  loan  of  family  manuscripts,  and  to  Miss 
Frances  Burke  for  help  in  deciphering  some  of  her  grand 
father's  papers. 

MARY  S.  WATTS. 

CINCINNATI,  OHIO, 
April  1,  1908. 


NATHAN   BURKE 


NATHAN  BURKE 

CHAPTER  I 
IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD 

A  MAN'S  memory,  be  it  ever  so  exact  and  vigorous,  is,  at 
best,  an  unstable  sort  of  tool,  or,  if  that  figure  does  not 
please,  let  me  liken  it  to  an  unbiddable  servant,  forever 
fetching  us  the  wrong  thing,  or  refusing  to  fetch  at  all,  or 
going  capering  off  with  a  childish  futility,  on  some  back 
ward  trail,  led  by  a  sound,  a  scent,  a  passing  glance.  As  I 
sat  here,  addressing  myself  to  the  more  or  less  serious  task 
of  recording  Nathan  Burke's  career  and  history,  and  quite 
resolute  to  begin  where  all  biographers  should,  at  the  begin 
ning,  my  servant  (to  pursue  the  allegory)  went  clean  dis 
tracted  at  the  opening  of  a  window  near  by,  the  entering 
fragrance  of  lilacs,  and  the  view  of  a  few  blossoming  fruit 
trees  in  a  neighboring  yard,  shaken  and  dismantled  by  the 
sweet  fresh  gales  of  spring.  These  trifles  sharply  recalled 
another  day,  another  spring,  a  yard  not  unlike  this  of  my 
neighbor's,  with  just  such  a  handsome  sober  house  set  in  the 
middle  of  it;  and  looking  out  in  the  direction  of  the  woodshed 
whence  proceeded  a  lusty  sound  of  whistling,  I  beheld,  upon 
my  soul,  the  living  counterpart  and  image  of  Mr.  Burke  as 
he  was  upwards  of  forty  years  ago,  in  the  person  of  the 
hired  man  jauntily  swinging  an  axe  upon  a  pile  of  stove 
wood!  Burke  chops  a  little  decorously  in  his  own  wood 
shed  nowadays  for  his  health,  and  his  own  chore-boy  smil 
ingly  humors  the  old  gentleman,  admires  the  symmetry  of 
his  kindlings,  and  pointedly  expresses  grave  doubts  whether 
he  (the  boy)  could  get  through  his  duties  without  the  general's 
stout  assistance.  He  is  unconscious  that  the  latter,  beneath 
a  surface  pleasantry,  conceals  reserves  of  gall;  some  day 
B  1 


2  NATHAN   BURKE 

Mr.  Burke  means  to  be  revenged  on  this  patronizing  menial. 
Some  day  he  will  burst  out  and  say:  " Young  man,  when 
I  was  your  age  —  which  I  take  to  be  seventeen  or  so,  by 
the  exceedingly  wide  register  of  your  rather  unmanageable 
voice,  and  the  vernal  display  of  small  blooms  upon  your 
countenance  —  yes,  when  I  was  two  years  younger,  I  was 
twice  the  chore-boy  you  are,  for  all  your  airs  !  I  could  milk 
a  cow,  or  harness  a  horse,  or  fell  a  tree  with  any  man  in 
the  county.  To  be  sure  I  was  only  getting  twelve  dollars 
a  month  and  my  keep  for  all  these  accomplishments,  whereas 
you  get  (you  do  not  by  any  means  earn)  twenty-five  or 
more  —  but  times  are  changed.  Flaccid  product  of  civili 
zation  that  you  are  —  "  the  chore-boy  will  estimate  this 
as  some  fearfully  and  wonderfully  recondite  " cuss- word"  — 
"  what  are  your  recollections  and  experiences  at  seventeen 
compared  to  mine  at  the  same  age  ?  An  ignoble  record  of 
hooky-playing,  orchard-robbing,  surreptitious  gambling  and 
tobacco-smoking  constitutes  all  your  romance.  Did  you 
ever  shoot  deer  with  an  old  ' Tower'  musket  that  was 
carried  in  the  War  of  1812  ?  Did  you  ever  go  fishing  and 
trapping  with  Jake  Darnell  —  Jake  Darnell  who  knew  Mad 
Anthony  Wayne,  and  had  scouted  with  Daniel  Boone  ?  Go 
to!  I'll  lay  a  double  eagle  to  a  shin-plaster,  sir,  that  you 
never  even  heard  of  the  Alamo  —  I,  I  who  speak  to  you, 
can  remember  when  it  didn't  surrender!"  The  chore-boy 
will  listen  respectfully,  and  will  afterwards  be  overheard 
remarking  to  the  boy  next  door  that  he  wouldn't  wonder 
if  th'  old  gin'ral  was  breakin'  up  fast,  Hank.  He  don't  ack 
nachul.  You'd  oughta  heard  him  th'  other  day  blowin' 
around  'bout  what  he  used  to  could  do  when  he  was  my 
size.  'Tain't  like  him,  not  a  bit! 

No,  it  would  not  be  much  like  him,  even  in  his  present 
state  of  senile  decrepitude,  at  the  age  of  sixty  odd;  those 
words  will  never  be  spoken,  as  much  for  Burke's  own  sake 
as  for  yours,  oh,  pimpled,  crowing,  squeaking,  awkward, 
kind-hearted  chore-boy  !  Surely  it  is  no  longer  ago  than 
last  month,  last  week,  yesterday,  that  Nat  Burke,  pimpled, 
crowing,  squeaking,  awkward,  and  I  hope  kind-hearted 
even  as  you,  was  set  down  out  of  the  farm  wagon  at  Mr. 
William  Ducey's  gate  on  a  spring  morning,  bright  and  windy 
even  as  this,  to  enter  upon  his  first  job.  The  doleful  truth 


MR.  BURKE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD      3 

is  that  it  was  in  the  year  of  Grace  183- ;  though,  as  Nat 
kept  no  journal  of  his  daily  doings  at  that  time,  his  utmost 
accomplishment  in  the  clerkly  way  being  his  own  name  — 
in  print  letters  —  the  actual  date  of  his  arrival  must  remain 
unknown.  He  had  got  up  at  dawn,  the  cool,  blowing,  pink- 
skied  dawn  of  an  April  day ;  from  the  tiny  window  in  the 
peak  of  the  cabin-loft  that  was  Nat's  bedchamber,  and 
from  the  bench  beside  the  back  door,  where  with  a  bucket 
of  icy  well  water  he  performed  his  toilet,  the  boy  could  see 
a  bit  of  black  bottom-land  where  wheat  his  own  hand  had 
sown  last  autumn  was  beginning  to  show  tenderly ;  beyond 
were  the  flat  shining  links  of  the  river  and  the  woody  slopes 
of  its  farther  bank.  The  trees  were  still  leafless ;  they  lay 
like  a  wreath  of  smoke  about  the  landscape,  pricked  out  with 
purple  here  and  there  where  the  red  buds  were  coming  into 
bloom.  The  service-bush  had  sprung  to  life,  miraculously, 
over  night,  and  now  timidly  shook  out  a  handful  of  its  frail 
green-white  blossoms  on  the  edge  of  the  deadening.  A  thou 
sand  odors,  growth  and  decay  commingled,  starting  grass 
and  rotting  leaves,  were  in  the  air ;  a  kind  of  newness  in 
the  feel  of  the  stable-mire  under  foot  as  Nathan  went  squelch 
ing  through  it.  Moisture  that  was  not  frost,  but  real  dew, 
like  the  dew  of  summer,  glistened  on  the  fence  rails,  on  the 
shingles  of  the  cabin  and  its  environing  sheds  and  lean-tos. 
They  were  not  rich  in  architectural  detail,  and  Nathan  knew 
them  as  he  knew  the  lines  of  his  palm ;  since  he  was  born 
he  had  opened  and  closed  his  eyes  morning  and  evening 
upon  a  scene  that  varied  only  with  the  seasons.  To-day  he 
was  conscious  of  no  more  acute  vision  than  at  other  times ; 
knowingly,  at  least,  he  made  no  effort  to  impress  the  kind 
and  homely  picture  on  his  memory.  Yet  to  the  end  of  his 
life  he  will  remember  it  as  he  saw  it  then:  the  logs  of  the 
cabin  chinked  with  clay,  the  smoke  from  its  chimney,  the 
squirrel  that  chittered  on  the  fence,  the  tapped  sugar- 
maple  hard  by,  with  a  little  wooden  gutter  to  lead  the  sap 
into  the  broken  crock  between  its  roots,  the  bird  that  sent 
a  ringing  call  from  its  topmost  branches,  the  very  look  and 
motion  of  the  old  mare  by  the  straw-rick,  still  shaggy  with 
her  winter  coat,  raising  her  wise  head  to  watch  him,  her 
foal  staring  not  at  all  wisely  for  a  moment,  then  flinging  up 
its  knock-kneed  legs  in  an  inane  caracole  and  circling  around 


4  NATHAN   BURKE 

in  a  fit  of  coltish  good  spirits.  Is  it  because  on  this  morn 
ing  Nathan  began  the  world  ?  He  put  the  event  to  himself 
in  no  such  high,  resounding  terms;  he  would  have  told  you 
concisely  —  for  he  was  not  then  and  never  became  a  par 
ticularly  free  talker  —  that  he  had  got  a  job  by  the  month, 
choring  for  Mr.  William  Ducey.  And  as  to  entering  upon 
his  career,  Nat  would  scarcely  have  supposed  that  splitting 
kindlings,  washing  carriages,  making  gardens,  and  cutting 
grass  merited  so  fine  a  name;  for  all  that,  the  day  and  scene 
abide  monumentally  among  his  recollections,  and  have  out 
lasted  a  score  of  others  better  worth  remembering. 

It  was  some  fifteen  miles  to  toAvn,  which  Nathan  proposed 
to  trudge  between  sunrise  and  eight  o'clock.  At  this  season 
the  back-country  road  would  be  none  of  the  best,  as  he  knew; 
in  places  along  the  river-bottoms  it  would  be  almost  knee- 
deep  in  mud.  But  to  cross  over  to  the  east  and  take  the 
State  Road  would  mean  an  extra  five  miles,  and  he  would  not 
gain  enough  either  in  time  or  ease  of  walking  to  make  it 
worth  his  while.  Without  doubt  he  liked  the  river  road, 
stones  and  mud,  hill  and  hollow,  a  deal  better.  It  had  been 
a  trail  in  Indian  days,  and  they  were  not  so  distant,  nor  the 
frontier  itself  so  remote  in  the  thirties  but  that  some  hint 
of  the  pioneer's  wild  and  bloody  romance  might  yet  hang 
about  his  ancient  path  to  attract  the  feet  of  a  boy.  Indeed, 
Nathan  loved  his  river  with  the  shy  and  speechless  sentiment 
of  his  fifteen  years;  he  had  been  born  and  brought  up  on  its 
banks,  had  fished  and  hunted  along  its  every  turn,  gone 
swimming  in  its  every  basin;  even  its  pretty  and  flowing 
Indian  name  obscurely  charmed  him.  To  this  day  he  calls  it 
to  mind  with  a  sort  of  pleasant  pang;  he  has  seen  the  Niagara 
and  the  Mississippi,  and  the  streams  of  many  great  lands  — 
but  are  not  the  Scioto  and  the  Olentanjy,  rivers  of  Ohio, 
better  than  all  alien  waters  ? 

So  Nat,  the  route  decided  upon,  set  about  his  preparations 
cheerily;  they  were  not  very  elaborate,  for  they  consisted 
mainly  in  the  handy  looping  together  on  a  leather  thong  of 
his  one  pair  of  cowhide  boots,  so  that  they  might  hang 
around  his  neck,  and  not  impede  his  walking  by  being  on  his 
feet.  It  was  quite  warm  enough,  in  Nat's  opinion,  to  go 
without  boots,  and  when  he  got  near  town,  where  it  behooved 
him  to  make  a  dressy  appearance,  he  would  put  them  on. 


MR.  BURKE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD      5 

The  rest  of  his  wardrobe  —  a  clean  calico  shirt  and  a  pair  of 
knit  yarn  socks  —  he  carried  in  a  bundle.  He  had  hesi 
tated  a  little  about  taking  his  gun,  that  same  famous  old 
musket  that  had  belonged  to  his  father,  and  had  smote 
Britishers,  hip  and  thigh,  and  redskins  likewise  in  Tecumseh's 
battles,  not  to  mention  all  its  other  heroic  and  notable  deeds, 
before  Nathan  was  born;  it  seemed  as  if  there  would  be  no 
especial  point  in  lugging  this  formidable  piece  of  artillery 
about  amongst  the  supine  population  of  the  city.  What 
possible  use  could  Mr.  Ducey's  hired  man  have  for  a  gun  ? 
Yet  he  was  loath  to  leave  it;  he  had  for  it  the  unreasoning 
fondness  that  every  one  must  feel  for  a  faithful  tool.  And 
while  he  was  turning  the  question  in  his  mind,  Mrs.  Williams 
settled  it  for  him  once  for  all,  by  taking  the  weapon  down 
from  where  it  hung  on  the  cabin  wall  out  of  reach  of  the  chil 
dren,  and  handing  it  to  him  half  an  hour  later,  beautifully 
swabbed  and  polished,  the  lock  oiled,  the  barrel  rubbed  until 
the  delicate  arabesque  traceries  upon  the  steel  quivered  with 
reflections  in  the  sun  like  a  riffle  in  the  Scioto.  "  Better  not 
load  it,  Nathan,"  was  all  she  said.  "S'long  as  you're  goin' 
where  there's  folks." 

"I  wasn't  goin'  to  take  it  —  I  thought  mebbe  they'd  be 
skeered  of  me,"  said  Nathan,  thanking  her  awkwardly. 

"I  guess  not  —  anybody  that  had  any  sense'd  know  th' 
kind  of  boy  you  are,"  said  Mrs.  Williams,  briefly.  "It  was 
yer  pa's  gun,  an'  you'd  oughter  have  it  —  you  ain't  got  much. 
An'  ther's  no  use  leavin'  it  here  to  git  knocked  'round,  cuz 
you  won't  ever  come  back." 

"  Why,  yes,  I  will  so.  I'm  goin'  to  come  back  some  day  — 
some  day  soon,"  declared  the  boy,  surprised.  She  gave  a 
kind  of  negative  twitch  with  her  head  and  shoulders,  and 
turned  back  to  the  skillet  of  pork  frying  over  the  coals.  The 
wide  glare  from  the  hearth  beat  upon  her  gaunt,  big-boned 
frame,  the  lank  folds  of  her  faded  print  dress,  the  gnarled 
hand  she  put  up  to  shade  her  eyes  as  she  stooped  over  her 
task.  She  was  not  yet  thirty,  as  Nathan  knew,  but  she  had 
hardly  a  tooth  left  and  looked  as  old  as  Methuselah,  as  old 
as  her  own  mother,  old  woman  Darce,  sitting  yonder  in  the 
chimney-corner  mumbling  the  stem  of  her  pipe.  It  was  diffi 
cult  to  believe  that  either  one  of  them  could  ever  have  been  a 
girl  like  Jake  Darnell's  Nance,  for  instance  —  she  was  almost 


6  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  only  girl  whom  Nathan  knew,  and  he  pondered  over  the 
comparison,  eying  Mrs.  Williams  gravely.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  life  it  occurred  to  him  to  wonder  that  all  women 
should  be  either  pretty  young  girls  or  weather-beaten  and 
broken  old  hags;  in  his  experience  of  the  sex  there  were  only 
the  two  varieties.  Thirty  seemed  to  him  then  a  prodigious 
antiquity;  he  was  vaguely  sorry  for  Mrs.  Williams.  Per 
haps  some  conception  of  the  sad  ugliness  of  her  existence 
entered  the  boy's  mind;  she  would  have  been  the  last  person 
in  the  world  to  pity  herself,  but  suddenly  Nathan  perceived 
a  painful  unfairness  in  the  fact  that  here  he  was  going  away 
to  the  city  with  all  its  wonders  —  for,  after  all,  the  city  is  the 
city,  and  even  for  a  hired  man,  even  for  a  sober-thinking  lad 
like  Nat  Burke,  replete  with  diversions  and  novelties  —  and 
poor  Mrs.  Williams  must  stay  on  changelessly,  doing  the  same 
work,  seeing  the  same  things,  day  after  day,  year  in  and  year 
out.  In  later  times  Burke  recalled  with  some  amusement  the 
brilliant  perspective  this  fifteen-mile  journey  opened  for  him; 
but  fifteen  miles  in  those  days  was  to  the  backwoods  as  a 
hundred  now;  and  for  that  matter  it  still  seems  to  me  that 
in  every  journey,  even  in  the  last  great  journey  of  all,  he  that 
travels  has  the  best  of  it,  and  the  heartache  is  to  those  that 
are  left  behind. 

Nat  went  out  and  conscientiously  fed  and  watered  the  stock 
on  this  last  morning,  brought  in  a  pail  of  milk,  and  drew  one 
of  water  for  Mrs.  Williams,  according  to  his  wont.  'Liph 
Williams,  observing  this,  commented  jocosely  upon  it  as  they 
sat  down  to  breakfast.  "  Thought  ye  was  Ducey's  hired 
man  now,  Nat,"  he  said.  " Changed  yer  mind,  hey?  I 
can't  give  ye  no  twelve  dollars  a  month,  y'know.  Yer 
keep's  all  ye've  been  wuth  to  me  so  far.  So  ye'd  better  think 
twicet,  and  not  carry  no  more  water,  ner  milk  no  more  cows 
than  ye  hev'  to." 

"'Tain't  nothin'  but  what  I'd  orter  do,  'long  as  I  ain't 
goin'  to  be  here  after  this,"  said  Nathan,  somewhat  abashed. 
"  I  done  it  fer  —  fer  good-by.  That  old  well's  pretty  hard  to 
git  water  up  from  —  fer  womenfolks,  I  mean." 

Williams  laughed.  "Ye  wanter  look  out,  Nathan;  ye're 
th'  kind  that  gits  put  upon." 

"TV  well's  all  right,  Nathan.  'Tain't  no  trouble  fer  me," 
said  Mrs.  Williams,  harshly.  She  got  up  hastily  from  the 


MR.   BURKE  BEGINS   THE  WORLD  7 

table  and  began  to  clatter  among  her  pots  and  pans,  turning 
her  back  on  the  company.  Nat  was  so  far  from  suspecting 
that  anybody  could  possibly  miss  him,  or  feel  a  regret  at  his 
going,  that,  noticing  her  flushed  face  and  puffy  eyelids  a  little 
while  after  when  he  took  his  leave,  he  set  them  down  to  the 
heat  of  the  fire  over  which  she  had  been  bending.  It  was 
not  a  tragic  farewell;  the  struggle — itself  stern  and  serious 
enough  —  for  a  mere  living  among  backwoods  folk  almost 
exhausted  their  capacity  for  emotion;  they  had  little  leisure 
for  the  expression  of  either  joy  or  sorrow,  pain  or  pleasure. 
The  great  and  moving  events  of  life  came  to  them  like  the 
seasons  of  the  year;  and  their  hard  philosophy  recognized 
that  these  things,  like  the  seasons,  whether  good  or  bad,  were 
ineluctable  yet  sure  to  change.  Whatever  tenderness  Mrs. 
Williams  felt  for  Nathan,  whatever  rough  friendship  had 
grown  up  between  the  boy  and  'Liph  during  the  years  of  their 
life  together,  not  one  of  them  would  have  been  able  to  give 
it  voice;  the  purple  patch  would  have  disconcerted  them  all. 
"Wish  ye  luck,  Nat,"  the  farmer  said  shortly,  yet  with  a  real 
kindness,  and  went  off  to  his  plough.  So  fine  a  morning  could 
not  be  wasted  in  useless  ceremonies;  almost  before  Nathan 
had  reached  the  road  he  could  hear  'Liph  shouting  lustily 
behind  his  horses  in  the  corn-field  back  of  the  cabin.  Mrs. 
Williams,  however,  came  to  the  door,  and  watched  him  as  he 
strode  confidently  away.  "He  won't  ever  come  back, 
'cep'n  mebbe  to  see  us  oncet,"  she  said  aloud.  "Well  — " 
she  went  resolutely  into  the  house.  Nat  himself,  to  be 
truthful,  departed  without  much  of  a  pang.  He  had  some 
trouble  in  ordering  back  the  dog,  who  came  bouncing  after 
him  under  the  mistaken  impression  that  a  gun  and  a  bundle 
meant,  as  usual,  all  day  in  the  woods,  and  perhaps  wild  tur 
key  or  quail.  He  lacked  the  discernment  to  distinguish  one 
game-season  from  another,  or  a  musket  from  a  shot-gun,  and 
was  confounded  at  the  roughness  of  his  welcome.  Nathan 
had  to  stamp,  to  bawl  furiously,  finally  to  make  the  motion 
of  stooping  for  a  stone  and  throwing  it  (he  had  not  the  heart 
to  perform  that  unkind  and  unjust  action  in  reality)  before 
the  creature  could  understand  him.  It  stopped  still  with  its 
head  on  one  side,  eying  him,  tentatively  wagging,  grinning 
doggishly,  and  wrinkling  its  brows  in  interrogation;  then 
retreated  slowly,  drooping  and  reproachful. 


8  NATHAN   BURKE 

Nat  went  on  in  a  kind  of  sober  lightness  of  heart;  he  was  a 
quiet  boy,  and,  even  at  fifteen,  felt  no  disposition  to  celebrate 
his  entrance  into  manhood  —  for  was  he  not  Ducey's  hired 
man  f  —  by  any  undue  demonstrations.  Another  boy  in  his 
place  might  have  been  whistling  and  shying  pebbles  at  the 
robins  and  squirrels;  but  Nathan  was  too  much  of  a  sports 
man  for  the  latter  amiable  pursuit;  if  he  took  the  trouble  to 
notice  a  squirrel  or  robin  at  all,  it  was  because  he  meant  to 
shoot  it  for  supper.  And  as  to  whistling,  he  could  not  carry 
a  tune  to  save  his  life,  and  his  whistle  resembled  in  strength 
and  melody  the  sound  made  by  an  ungreased  cart-wheel. 
Knowing  the  distance  he  must  go,  he  settled  down  into  the 
long,  ungraceful  lope  of  the  backwoodsman,  which  gets  over 
the  ground  with  amazing  rapidity  and  the  least  possible  fa 
tigue;  and  in  an  hour  or  so  sighted  Jake  Darnell's  cabin  on 
the  bluff  above  the  river.  There  was  smoke  coming  from  the 
chimney,  but  no  other  sign  of  activity  about  the  raw,  littered 
yard,  or  the  neglected  corn-patch  by  the  roadside,  although 
the  day  was  already  pretty  well  advanced  according  to 
Nathan's  reckoning.  Approaching  he  caught  a  gleam  of 
scarlet  by  the  door  and  saw  Nance  feeding  half  a  dozen  hens 
from  a  pan  of  corn-meal  mush.  Nathan  paused,  not  at  the 
gate  for  there  was  none,  but  in  an  angle  of  the  sagging  rail 
fence,  and  Nance  came  slowly  towards  him,  shooing  the  chick 
ens  from  under  her  feet. 

"Goin'  ?"  she  queried  without  other  salutation,  taking  in 
at  a  single  flashing  glance  the  boots,  the  gun,  the  bundle,  and 
the  import  of  all  three.  She  put  down  the  pan  on  a  conven 
ient  stump,  leaned  against  it  with  her  arms  folded,  kicked 
a  chicken  out  of  the  way,  and  surveyed  Nathan  from  top  to 
toe  keenly.  "  When  d'ye  'low  ye'll  git  to  Ducey's,  Nat  ?" 

"'Bout  th'  middle  of  th'  forenoon,  I  expect.  Yer  pap 
wouldn't  be  goin',  would  he  ?  He  said  he  might  need  powder 
V  shot  by  this  time." 

"  Well,  he  don't,"  said  Nance,  decisively.  She  cast  a  sharp 
look  over  her  shoulder  at  the  house.  "Did  ye  wanter  see 
him?" 

"Not  unless  he's  handy,"  Nathan  said.  "I  —  I  thought 
I'd  jest  like  to  say  thanky  to  him  for  gittin'  me  th'  place  with 
Duceys.  I  ain't  had  a  chance  to  tell  him  so.  Hadn't  'a'  been 
fer  him,  I  don't  guess  they'd  ever  known  anything  'bout  me. '' 


MR.  BURKE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD      9 

"Oh,  I  reckon  pap  didn't  strain  himself,"  said  Nance. 
"Ye're  welcome  to  whatever  he  done  er  said.  Ye  can't  see 
him  this  mornin',  anyhow.  He's  plumb  full  —  full's  a  tick. 
Come  home  last  night  so's  he  couldn't  hardly  stand  up.  I 
hed  to  make  him  a  kinder  pallet  on  th'  floor.  Ye  know  he's 
been  up  in  Hardin  County  shootin',  an'  he  got  a  kinder 
runty  little  she-deer,  wan't  much  bigger'n  a  six-weeks  calf  — 
th'  way  they  git  along  towards  th'  end  of  th'  winter,  y'know 
—  an'  he  took  and  sold  it  fer  three  dollars  over  at  th'  cross 
roads,  an'  come  home  with  most  of  it  inside  him,  I  guess; 
leastways  they  wan't  but  two  bits  in  his  pockets  when  I 
went  through  'em.  I've  seen  him  wuss  drunk,  though;  he'll 
be  out  of  it  by  sundown,  'cordin'  to  th'  signs.  /  know  him." 
She  gave  these  data  with  a  sort  of  detached  almost  profes 
sional  unconcern,  and  finished  with  a  wide  hearty  yawn, 
showing  a  row  of  teeth  small,  even,  and  white,  like  grains  of 
Indian  corn.  "I  git  sorter  tired,  times,  settin'  up  waitin' 
fer  him,"  she  explained,  with  no  slightest  trace  of  complaint 
in  her  tone,  however. 

Nathan  looked  at  her  with  a  feeling  remotely  akin  to  pity. 
He  must  have  been  in  something  of  a  melting  mood  that 
morning,  for  he  had  never  before  given  any  consideration  to 
the  lot  or  character  of  Mrs.  Williams,  of  Nance  Darnell,  of  any 
body  on  earth,  even  himself.  At  this  distance  of  time  I  cannot 
judge  the  boy  impartially;  yet  I  like  to  think  that  some  hu 
mane  and  kindly  spirit  was  beginning  to  stir  faintly  within 
him.  "  It's  kinder  hard  on  ye,  Nance,  hevin'  yer  pa  git  drunk 
so  often  — " 

1 '  Why  ?  He  never  lays  a  hand  on  me, "  said  the  girl .  The 
red  flushed  hotly  over  her  dark,  rich-colored  face;  her  big 
black  eyes  blazed;  she  looked  at  Nathan  almost  vengefully. 
"He's  as  good  as  gold,  pap  is  ;  whoever  says  he  ain't,  lies! 
I'd  a  heap  ruther  hev'  pap  drunk  than  some  other  folks' 
fathers  sober,  7  tell  ye!" 

"I  didn't  mean  that  way,"  said  Nathan,  clumsily,  a  little 
cloudy  in  his  own  mind  as  to  what  he  did  mean.  "I  wasn't 
sayin'  anything  agin  yer  father  —  he's  too  good  a  friend  to 
me  fer  that.  Only  seems  as  if  you'd  be  better  off  if  he  didn't 
take  too  much,  times." 

"Well,  it's  nat'ral  to  a  man  to  drink,  I  guess,"  said  Nance, 
tolerantly.  "  Don'  know  how  you're  goin'  to  stop  'em.  Pap 


10  NATHAN   BURKE 

ain't  like  some,  swillin'  jest  fer  th'  taste.  He  don't  keer 
nothin'  'bout  th'  taste  —  he  jest  does  it  to  feel  good.  Pap 
ain't  no  hog." 

There  appeared  to  Nathan  also  a  species  of  distorted  virtue 
in  this  trait  of  Jake  Darnell's.  He  was  nowise  amused  or 
taken  aback  by  Nance's  fierce  loyalty,  although  there  were 
other  times  when  he  could  not  comprehend  the  girl.  The 
very  next  moment  she  surprised  him  by  bursting  out  with: 
"Oh,  Nathan,  ain't  th'  day  jest  —  jest  -  In  default  of 

vocabulary  she  made  a  sweeping  gesture  with  her  lithe  strong 
arms,  and  drew  in  a  long  breath.  " Seems  like  I  could  jest 
holler,  'cause  I'm  alive!  Look  at  th'  sarvis-bush  over  there. 
Say,  do  you  know  what  it  puts  me  in  mind  of  ?  It  puts  me 
in  mind  of  a  little  Injun  girl  hidin'  an'  peekin'  an'  kinder 
'fraid  to  come  out." 

"You  always  hev'  such  fancy  notions,  Nance,"  said  the 
boy,  wonderingly. 

"I  dunno  what  makes  me  hev'  'em  —  mebbe  everybody 
does,  only  they  don't  come  out  an'  say  'em  like  I  do,"  she  said 
and  laughed,  giving  him  a  quick  conscious  glance.  In  fact, 
Nance  with  her  odd  violent  changes  of  mood,  her  spurts  of 
temper,  her  open  display  of  feeling,  was  an  exotic  figure 
amongst  her  surroundings;  and  Nathan,  as  narrow  as  was 
his  experience,  was  already  dimly  aware  of  it.  Mrs.  Wil 
liams,  he  thought,  might  indeed  have  been  a  girl  once,  but 
could  she  ever  have  been  a  girl  like  Nance  Darnell  ? 

"Mis'  Williams  is  real  sorry  ye're  goin',  Nat,"  she  said, 
hitting  neatly  upon  the  subject  of  his  thoughts  by  one  of 
those  uncanny  chances  with  which  we  are  all  familiar.  "She 
was  cryin'  th'  other  day  when  we  was  talkin'  'bout  it.  She 
'lowed  she  set  as  much  store  by  you,  's  'f  you  was  her  own 
son." 

Nathan  crimsoned  and  stuttered,  incoherent  with  surprise. 
He  felt  the  shock  of  pleasure  succeeded  by  a  potent  anxiety 
with  which  we  make  the  discovery  that  somebody  is  fond  of 
us;  it  is  a  responsibility  to  have  somebody  fond  of  you. 

"I'm  goin'  to  come  back  an'  see  you  all  every  time  I  git  a 
chance,"  he  said.  "I  told  her  so." 

"S'posin'  ye  don't  git  th'  place  after  all,  Nat?  S'posin' 
Ducey's  hired  somebody  else  ?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  reckon  he'd  do  that,"  said  Nathan,  confi- 


MR.   BURKE   BEGINS   THE   WORLD  11 

dently.  "He  told  yer  pap  he  was  set  on  gittin'  a  reg'lar 
country-boy  that'd  know  all  'bout  country-things,  so's  he 
wouldn't  hev'  to  teach  him  nothin'.  I  guess  that's  me.  I 
don't  know  nothin'  else,"  he  added  humorously.  "When  yer 
pap's  in  town,  he'll  come  'round  an'  see  me,  won't  he  ?" 

"If  he  don't  git  nothin'  to  drink  first,"  said  Nance.  "Next 
time  he  goes  I'm  goin'  with  him.  I  kin  keep  him  straight. 
'Cause,  ye  know,  he  always  gives  me  th'  money  right  off  that 
he  gits  fer  th'  quail,  er  rabbit,  er  th'  varmints'  pelts  he's  got 
to  sell,  an'  then  I  spend  it  fer  what  we  need.  That's  th'  only 
way  to  do  with  pap  —  jest  spend  his  money  before  he  gits 
holt  of  a  whiskey-jug,  er  they  won't  be  any  to  spend.  I  found 
out  that  quick's  I  commenced  goin'  to  town  with  him.  That 
was  last  year  some  time,  y'know.  I  been  three-four  times 
here  lately." 

Nathan  was  interested;  he  had  been  only  once  himself. 
"Did  ye  ever  see  Mr.  Ducey,  Nance  ?" 

She  nodded.  "Lord,  yes!  Pap  goes  to  th'  store  every 
time  he's  got  anything  to  sell,  you  know.  'Tain't  Ducey's 
store,  it's  Mr.  Marsh's,  too;  leastways  th'  old  man  is  gin'rally 
'round  somewheres.  I  guess  he  does  most  of  the  tradin'. 
I've  seen  Mis'  Ducey,  too,  Nathan."  Her  face  lit  up  with  the 
recollection.  It  was  another  of  those  outbreaks  of  enthu 
siasm  that  so  transfigured  Nance;  her  eyes  glowed;  there 
was  something  at  once  brilliant  and  tender  in  her  expression. 
"Oh,  Nathan,  you'd  oughter  see  her!  Never  mind  —  you're 
goin'  to.  My,  I  wisht  it  was  me!  She's  jest  — "  again  the 
lack  of  words  defeated  her.  "She's  got  blue  eyes,  an'  th' 
least  little  teenty  hands  —  like  a  coon's  paws,  only  they're 
white  'stid  of  black  —  white  like  snow  —  but  kinder  cimnin' 
that  same  way  coons'  paws  is,  I  mean.  An'  her  hair  jest  as 
yaller,  an'  fine  like  corn-silk!"  She  paused  in  a  strange 
ecstacy  of  admiration.  Nathan  was  too  accustomed  to  her 
to  be  greatly  impressed  by  this  flight;  he  had  seen  her  crazed 
in  the  same  fashion  over  a  nest  of  birds'  eggs,  a  pet  calf,  a 
wild  rose  in  bloom  —  any  one  of  a  dozen  headlong  fancies. 
The  phrase  is  misleading;  for,  as  Nathan  came  to  recognize 
in  later  years,  not  the  least  curious  thing  about  Nance  was 
that  she  was  steadfast  in  her  wild  devotion  and  clung  heroic 
ally  to  her  idols. 

"Well,  if  I'm  ever  to  see  Mis'  Ducey,  I'd  better  be  gittin' 


12  NATHAN   BURKE 

along  I  think,"  he  said,  and  fell  back  a  step  or  two  into  the 
road.  "Good-by,  Nance.  Tell  yer  pap  I  stopped  in  to 
tell  him  thanky ,  will  you  ?  " 

"Pap  didn't  do  nothin',"  repeated  the  girl,  "'cepn  jest 
say  he  knowed  a  good  stiddy  boy  that  could  shoot  er  ketch 
fish  ekal  to  himself,  and  - 

"  No !  Did  he  say  that  ?  "  said  Nathan,  pleased.  1  hen  he 
grinned.  "I  dunno  as  that's  jest  what  Ducey  wants/'  he 
remarked  ;  "but  Jake  done  what  he  could  fer  me,  anyhow." 

He  swung  into  the  road;  and  Nance  returned  to  her  chick 
en-feeding,  and  the  other  housewifely  duties  that  somehow 
suited  her  so  ill,  although  she  performed  them  briskly  and 
capably  enough.  Where  his  path  crossed  the  next  bit  of 
rising  ground,  Nathan  looked  back  and  caught  the  flicker  of 
her  red  calico  gown  glancing  like  a  flame  about  the  dark  in 
terior  of  the  cabin. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE'S  PEDIGREE  COMES  UNDER 
DISCUSSION 

WHEN  the  city  of  Monterey  fell  to  the  American  arms  in 
September  of  1846,  and  General  Ampudia  marched  out,  there 
was  found  among  the  sick  and  disabled  left  behind  (according 
to  the  Mexican  habit)  an  Irish  officer  of  Torrejon's  staff,  who 
had  been  wounded  by  a  musket-ball  in  the  thigh  while  assist 
ing  —  with  the  most  signal  courage  and  resolution  —  in  the 
defence  of  the  redoubt  they  called  Rincon  del  Diablo,  on  the 
second  day  of  the  fighting.  That  he  was  of  an  alien  race 
need  surprise  nobody,  for  his  country  has  sent  just  such  sol 
diers  of  fortune,  brave,  able,  shiftless,  and  light-hearted, 
to  every  army  on  the  face  of  the  globe.  This  gentleman's 
name  was  Bourke,  and  he  happened  to  be  taken  up  and  cared 
for  by  an  officer  of  one  of  the  United  States  volunteer  regi 
ments  for  whom  he  subsequently  professed  —  and  without 
doubt  sincerely  felt  at  the  time  —  the  warmest  gratitude  and 
affection.  "We  arre  —  we  must  be  —  related,  an'  the  ties 
of  blood  arre  sthrong,  me  bye,"  he  would  say  touchingly  — 
indeed  with  tears  in  his  eyes  —  after  the  third  or  fourth  tum 
bler  of  that  raw  brandy  of  the  country  which  the  sutlers  some 
how  found  means,  against  the  severest  penalties,  to  smuggle 
into  camp;  "ye  were  dthrawn  to  me  at  wance,  an'  me  to  you. 
To  be  sure,  I'd  as  soon  have  expicted  to  meet  an  Irishman 
named  Abednego  as  wan  named  Nathan,  but  ye  were  doubt 
less  christened  from  the  other  side  of  the  house."  And  on 
the  strength  of  this  kinship,  he  borrowed  Captain  Burke's 
money,  wore  his  clothes,  rode  his  horse,  and  made  himself 
free  of  his  quarters  in  a  style  which  the  captain  would 
scarcely  have  looked  for  from  an  own  brother.  If  this 
authority  was  to  be  believed,  the  Bourke  or  Burke  family 
made  their  appearance  on  this  planet  some  time  prior  to 
Adam  and  Eve,  Nathan's  immediate  ancestors  came  to  Amer- 

13 


14  NATHAN   BURKE 

ica  with  Christopher  Columbus  —  "and  bedad,  Nat,  your 
forefathers  were  kings  in  Connaught  whin  Prisident  Folk's 
were  swingin'  be  their  tails!"  To  which  Captain  Burke 
replied  rather  dryly  that  as  between  swinging  by  the  tail  and 
swinging  by  the  neck,  he  was  quite  certain  which  he  should 
choose;  but  that  the  Burkes  of  antiquity  might  have  swung 
by  both  ends  for  aught  he  knew,  being  ignorant  even  of  their 
names.  Of  recent  years,  Nathan,  recalling  the  conversa 
tion,  has  wondered  once  or  twice  where  this  exile  of  Erin  got 
his  Darwinian  figure  of  speech,  as  the  theory  was  not  gener 
ally  familiar  in  that  day;  but  it  is  too  late  to  ask  him  now. 
After  the  exchange  of  prisoners  he  disappeared  from  Burke's 
horizon,  and  when  last  heard  of,  had  taken  service  with  the 
Khedive;  he  may  be  a  dey,  a  bey,  a  pasha  of  ever  so  many 
tails  by  this  time. 

Mr.  Burke  never  gave  a  thought  to  following  up  that 
shadowy  relationship,  nor  felt  much  desire  to  investigate  the 
family-tree,  which,  judging  by  this  and  sundry  other  speci 
mens  of  what  it  bears,  must  be  a  somewhat  decayed  and 
tottering  old  vegetable  at  the  present  date.  For  a  good 
many  years  of  his  life  —  until,  in  fact,  he  was  a  man  grown 
and  certain  events  had  caused  the  matter  of  birth  and  de 
scent  to  assume  larger  proportions  in  his  view  —  Nathan 
knew  only  that  his  father's  name  was  John  Burke,  his  moth 
er's,  Mary  Granger;  the  responsibility  of  a  family  reputation 
was  one  which  he  never  had  to  support,  for  no  boy  was  ever 
more  alone  in  the  world.  Mary  Burke  died  the  day  after 
her  only  child  was  born;  the  father  was  drowned  while  spear 
ing  fish  through  the  ice  on  the  Scioto  River  when  Nathan  was 
a  bare  two  years  old.  Like  everybody  else  in  the  settlement, 
they  came  from  somewhere  in  the  older  States  —  Pennsyl 
vania —  Virginia  —  nobody  could  say  with  certainty;  the 
pioneers,  unless  they  chanced  to  have  migrated  from  the  same 
place,  seldom  knew  much  about  one  another's  antecedents, 
and  had  no  leisure  to  inquire.  Nathan  could  remember 
neither  of  these  parents,  nor  any  home  except  that  of  'Liph 
Williams,  who  had  added  the  fatherless  and  motherless  child 
to  his  own  already  numerous  brood,  from  no  affection  nor 
sense  of  duty,  for  Nathan  had  not  the  least  claim  upon  him, 
but  out  of  that  abounding  rough  charity  and  generosity 
characteristic  of  his  class.  The  Williamses  were  poor,  hard- 


MR.   BURKE'S    PEDIGREE  15 

working  people,  but  they  took  Nat  in,  fed  him,  clothed  him, 
nursed  him  through  half  a  dozen  childish  ailments,  did  their 
simple  best  for  him  without  ever  asking  or  expecting  recom 
pense.  The  thing  is  not  unusual;  it  happens  every  day. 
Poor  Tom  dies  and  poorer  Dick  promptly  takes  up  the  burden 
of  Tom's  widow  and  children;  lame  Harry  stumbles  into  the 
ditch,  and  some  ragged  Samaritan  hauls  him  out;  yonder 
beggar  shares  his  crust  with  somebody,  if  it  be  only  a  dog,  and 
gnaws  with  a  greater  relish  for  having  done  so.  Let  the 
cynics  who  refuse  to  see  aught  of  admirable  or  touching  in 
the  spectacle  of  humanity  so  great,  so  little,  so  mean,  so  noble, 
so  infinitely  laughable  and  pathetic,  let  them  listen  to  one 
man  at  least  who  has  found  the  world  the  best  and  kindest 
of  places,  and  met  with  a  thousand  good  turns  for  one 
evil. 

So  now  the  truth  is  out,  and  we  are  come  at  last  to  that 
proper  beginning  of  an  autobiography  I  promised  on  the  first 
page.  I  think  too  highly  of  Nathan  Burke's  descendants  to 
suppose  for  a  moment  that  they  could  be  ashamed  of  the  dis 
covery  that  their  grandfather  at  the  outset  of  his  career  was 
a  coarse  country  boy,  barely  able  to  count,  not  over-familiar 
with  the  spelling-book,  wholly  ignorant  of  what  we  call 
manners,  the  small  courtesies  of  which  we  profess  to  make  so 
little,  yet  which  we,  in  our  hearts,  respect  so  much.  But  the 
feeling  with  which  I  myself  look  back  upon  those  years  is,  I 
fear,  not  untinged  with  shame.  I  had  as  lief  have  begun  life 
with  a  more  elaborate  equipment,  and  often  think:  to  what 
heights  had  I  not  climbed,  could  I  have  had  a  better  start! 
It  is  a  feebleness  I  share  with  many,  weak  and  strong.  There 
was  a  wise  Frenchman  who  once  said:  "I  do  not  know  what 
the  heart  of  a  rascal  may  be.  I  know  what  the  heart  of  an 
honest  man  is;  it  is  horrible."  I  humbly  trust  mine  is  not 
so;  yet  I  know  that  of  myself  which  I  should  shrink  and 
wither  up  at  the  mere  notion  of  confessing  to  any  one.  Yes,  I 
have  waked  at  night,  and  cringed  among  the  bedclothes,  and 
blushed  in  the  darkness,  and  tossed  my  respectable  old  gray 
head  upon  the  pillow  at  the  recollection  of  those  moments  of 
weakness,  those  sneaking  faults  and  follies.  Is  there  a  man 
on  earth  who  has  not  done  the  like  ?  If  I  ask  my  children  to 
spare  me  the  recital  of  these  things,  I  do  not  ask  them  to 
believe  me  perfect.  In  the  autobiographies  of  fiction  — 


16  NATHAN   BURKE 

to  say  nothing  of  some  real  ones l  —  they  get  enough  of  dreary 
virtuous  twaddle  from  the  hero,  enough  of  preposterous  sham 
unconsciousness  to  stale  their  taste  for  perfection,  it  seems  to 
me.  Let  us  have  an  end  of  all  the  mouthing  and  attitudiniz 
ing;  the  best  of  us  can  be  no  better  than  a  plain  man  that 
tries  to  do  his  duty.  There  was  a  fashion  —  now,  happily, 
on  the  wane  —  of  writing  about  our  American  deeds  and  men 
as  if  both  were  not  only  above  censure  but  almost  too  high 
for  praise.  All  our  orators  were  Demosthenes  —  all  our  law 
givers  Solon  —  all  our  generals  Napoleon.  I  remember 
somebody  published  about  the  year  '55  a  short  account  of 
Mr.  Folk's  administration,  containing  the  following  sketch  of 
General  Worth,  whom  I  knew  slightly  in  Mexico.  My  friend, 
James  Sharpless,  having  come  upon  it  in  the  course  of  his 
reviewing  for  the  Daily  Neivs,  brought  it  to  me,  acridly  smil 
ing,  with  pencillings  about  the  paragraph,  marking  it  down 
for  slaughter:  "He  possessed  the  ardor  and  impetuosity  of 
Murat,  the  bravery  and  inflexible  determination  of  Ney,  the 
ability  and  judgment  of  Massena,  and  the  bearing  and  frank 
ness  of  Macdonald."  "  Murat,  Ney,  Massena,  Macdonald! 
Whew!!!"  Jim  wrote  underneath  it.  Worth  himself  al 
ready  abode  in  decent  silence  under  the  monument  in  Madi 
son  Square  with  " Honor  the  brave"  above  his  gallant  old 
bones;  he  would  have  been  the  first  to  laugh  at  that  Whew  of 
Jimmie's,  I  think.  What  did  the  fluent  author  of  that  gust 
of  rhetoric  know  of  Murat  or  Ney  ?  Nothing  at  all;  this 
braying  and  bragging  was  in  the  taste  of  the  day,  and  all 
of  us  did  not  approve  of  it,  we  still  had  to  stand  it.  The 
habit  of  fustian  was  something  worse  than  comical  or  con 
temptible  ;  it  wrought  an  actual  harm,  as  I  have  found  out 
since  entering  upon  this  task.  There  have  been  whole  shelves, 
whole  libraries  of  histories  and  biographies  of  those  times 
written,  not  one  word  of  which,  I  swear,  is  free  from  suspi 
cion;  pages  of  clap-trap  sentiment,  tin-foil  eloquence,  cheap, 
glittering  bombast,  alternate  with  pages  of  misstatements  and 
inaccuracies.  An  honest  man  burns  with  shame  at  the  read 
ing.  Twiggs  was  the  Hero  of  This,  Pierce  was  the  Hero  of 

1  In  the  margin  Burke  has  written :    "  Just  finished  reading  Win- 
field  Scott's  autobiog.     All  bosh.     And  some  of  it  d d  lies!"     He 

had  an  extraordinary  and  entirely  unjust  prejudice  against  General 
Scott;  the  journal  shows  it  repeatedly.  —  M.  S.  W. 


MR.    BURKE'S   PEDIGREE  17 

That,  your  humble  servant,  very  likely,  was  the  Hero  of 
T'other.  As  if  any  one  of  us  did  more  than  his  position  and 
his  own  self-respect  called  upon  him  to  do,  or  was  one  whit 
more  heroic  than  the  plainest  private  in  his  regiment !  My 
classic  learning  is  too  scanty  to  assure  me  if  the  Muse  of  His 
tory  is  represented  with  a  trumpet;  but  if  so,  the  lady  had 
better  exchange  it  for  a  pair  of  spectacles,  to  my  notion. 
Burke's  children,  at  least,  shall  not  be  left  to  read  this  windy 
rubbish  and  imagine  it  reflects  what  either  the  American 
people  at  large,  or  the  hard,  brave,  simple  men  I  knew, 
thought  and  believed. 

Were  it  not,  indeed,  for  the  opinions  expressed  with  some 
what  of  volcanic  warmth  in  that  last  paragraph,  I  am  un 
certain  that  I  should  have  undertaken  so  solemn  a  business 
as  this  writing  at  all.  My  grandson,  —  and  much  I  doubt 
whether  he  will  ever  weary  through  his  grandfather's  auto 
biography  !  —  being  a  brisk  youngster  of  six  or  thereabouts, 
has  been  enjoined  not  to  make  a  noise  when  he  observes  me 
to  be  busied  with  the  pen.  The  prohibition  is  more  severe 
upon  me  than  him,  for  whereas  he  frequently  forgets  it  alto 
gether,  I  have  it  constantly  in  mind  that  I  am  playing  the 
ungracious  part  of  a  grandfatherly  bogie,  especially  made  for 
the  blighting  of  little  boys.  He  sometimes  inquires  with  an 
appearance  of  interest  which  by  no  means  deceives  me,  how 
long  it  will  be  before  the  " story"  is  finished,  and  if  it  tells 
about  when  I  was  only  as  big  as  he,  and  did  I  kill  Indians 
when  I  was  "in  the  woods"?  This  fulfils  his  ideal  of  a 
career  and  a  hero,  and  I  grieve  both  to  disappoint  him  and  to 
lose  prestige  in  his  eyes.  But,  sad  to  say,  the  Indians  were 
all  dead  and  gone  in  that  part  of  the  world  before  my  day, 
though  they  were  active  and  virulent  enough  elsewhere 
farther  west  and  in  the  south ;  and  there  will  be  no  tomahawk 
ing,  nor  warwhooping  to  enliven  the  page.  The  Nat  Burke 
I  knew  when  he  was  our  little  Nat's  age  slept  safe  and  sound 
and  removed  from  all  danger  of  losing  his  young  scalp  in  the 
loft  over  the  Williamses'  cabin,  with  three  or  four  of  the  Wil 
liams  lads  for  bedfellows.  He  wore  'Liph's  old  pantaloons  cut 
down  to  suit  his  own  small  shanks;  he  got  up  at  dawn  and 
went  to  bed  with  the  chickens;  he  greatly  delighted  in  corn- 
meal  mush  fried  in  cakes  and  eaten  with  maple-syrup.  He 
trudged  three  miles  to  the  district  school  —  when  there  was 


18  NATHAN   BURKE 

a  teacher  —  and  three  miles  back;  and  I  am  afraid  did  not 
profit  to  a  high  degree  by  these  intermittent  journeys  to  the 
fountain-head  of  learning.  He  esteemed  much  the  privilege 
of  going  hunting  with  Jake  Darnell  —  and,  in  fact,  it  was  a 
privilege  and  a  lesson  in  the  antique  and  noble  art  of  the 
woodsman  which  Jake  did  not  accord  to  every  boy.  Many 
people  would  have  considered  that  profane  and  drunken  old 
Nimrod  not  the  choicest  associate  in  the  world  for  a  growing 
child;  but,  even  in  the  worst  sodden  stages  of  his  favorite 
vice,  where,  alas,  Nathan  saw  him  often  enough,  I  cannot 
think  his  company  harmed  the  lad.  The  breath  of  the 
backwoods  is  pure;  there  was,  when  all  was  said,  something 
fine  and  clean  and  becoming  to  a  man  in  the  primitive  ways 
by  which  Darnell  got  his  living.  And  if  his  example  did  not 
teach  Nathan  industry  and  self-control,  I  ask  you,  in  fair 
ness,  is  there  any  example  that  does  teach  them  ?  The  seed 
may,  perhaps,  be  sown,  but  you  and  I  must  be  the  gardeners. 
Jake  had  known  Nat's  father  and  mother;  he  had  for  Nat 
himself  one  of  those  unaccountable  fancies,  fanatically  enthu 
siastic,  yet  steady  and  enduring,  to  which  his  daughter  Nance 
was  so  prone;  he  was  as  pleased  the  day  Nat  shot  his  first  wild 
turkey,  and  as  absurdly  proud  of  that  feat,  as  the  boy  himself. 
According  to  his  simple  views  he  predicted  great  things  for 
his  young  companion.  "I'll  make  a  scout  of  ye,"  he  used  to 
say  in  moments  of  elation;  "ye  got  jest  th'  eye  fer  it,  Na 
than,  jest  th'  eye,  an'  th'  nerve.  'Tain't  jest  grit  fer  fightin', 
I  mean  —  any  fool's  got  that;  its  patience,  an'  it's  th' 
know-how,  an'  th'  know-when  —  them's  what  counts.  Cou- 
reur  de  bois,  that's  what  they  call  'em  up  north-a-way,  up  to 
th'  Lakes.  I  been  there.  That's  French,  what  I  said  jest 
now;  I  kin  talk  it,  y'know.  Ye  got  to  —  an'  talk  Injun  too 
—  two-three  kinds  of  Injun  talk  —  if  you're  scoutin'.  Yes  — 
oh,  Lord,  yes,  I  been  there.  Ever  tell  ye  'bout  Fort  Meigs  ? 
Ever  tell  ye  'bout  Fort  Stephenson  ?  It's  twenty  year  this 
summer.  Th'  Gin'ral  —  Gin'ral  Harrison  —  sent  me  down 
th'  Sandusky  River  with  a  letter  to  Major  Croghan  that  was 
commanding  at  Fort  Stephenson  —  'twan't  nothin'  but  a 
foot  er  two  o'  dirt  bank,  an'  a  stockade  with  th'  poles  wide 
'nough  'part  fer  to  stick  th'  bar'l  of  yer  rifle  through  !  I  went 
down  in  a  canoe  with  two  other  men,  one  of  'em  was  a  half- 
breed  we  called  Long  Joe  — 


MR.    BURKE'S   PEDIGREE  19 

'"  Was  they  Injuns  in  th'  road  ?"  interrupts  his  eager  audi 
ence. 

" Injuns  ?  God!  Yes,  woods  bilin'  with  'em.  That  half- 
breed  I  was  tellin'  ye  about,  they  got  him  —  shot  him  an' 
sculped  him.  That's  Injun  way,  ye  know.  I  ain't  ever  held 
it  up  agin  'em.  Injuns  is  Injuns.  I've  seen  plenty  white 
men  wan't  any  whiter  actin'  than  Tecumthe  —  I  knew  him 
well.  An'  as  fer  taking  sculps,  th'  Injuns  ain't  th'  only  ones 

—  th'  British  useter  give  a  bounty  fer  'em  those  days.     After 
they  killed  Joe,  like  I  told  ye,  th'  other  man  —  I  plumb  fergit 
his  name  —  and  I,  we  kep'  on.     He  wa^i't  hurt,  but  he  was 
took  kinder  silly  with  th'  heat  er  sumthin'  -  -  'twas  hotter  'n 
hell,  long  'bout  th'  first  week  in  July.     I  ric'lect  how  he  went 
along  singin'  an'  laffin'  -  -  'twas  all  I  c'ld  do  to  keep  him  at 
th'  paddle.     An'  me  squattin'  in  th'  stern  with  th'  rifle.     Th' 
river  was  low,  like  it  gits  in  a  hot  spell,  an'  oncet  or  twicet  we 
hed  to  git  out  fer  a  kinder  portage  where  they  was  these  little 
muddy  islands  —  an'   him   a-laffin'   an'   a-singin'   th'   hull 
time !     I  swanny  that  was  th'  longest  fifteen  mile  I  ever  made 
in  my  time;    'peared  like  I'd  orter  been  gray-headed  an' 
toothless  time  we  git  to  th'  eend  of  it !     An'  when  we  got  to 
th'  fort  an'  giv'  th'  letter  to  Croghan,  what  d'ye  s'pose  it 
said  ?     Why,  fer  him  to  light  right  out  —  quit  —  retreat  up 
th'  river  as  quick's  he  c'ld,  'count  o'  Proctor  bein'  in  front  of 
him  with  th'  British  troops  —  'twas  th'  Forty-first  Rig'ment, 
I  remember  —  an'  two  thousand  Injuns  on  his  flank.     Two 
thousan',  that's  what  I'd  jest  come  through,  mind  you.     I 
ain't  much  on  figgers,  but  take  m'  oath  they  wan't  any  two 
thousand  of  'em.     God!   I   never  give  a  red  fer    William 
Henry  Harrison  from  that  day  to   this.      Any  man  that'd 
fit  with  Injuns  half  his  nat'ral  life  had  orter  have  knowed  ye 
can't  git  any  two  thousand  redskins  together  an'  keep  'em 
together  —  not  even  Tecumthe  couldn't  do  it,  ner  Brandt 
ner  Red  Jacket  ner  any  of  their  own  kind,  let  alone  any  white 
man.     You'd  orter  seen  Croghan  when  he  read  th'  letter.     I 
went  in  to  where  he  was  settin'  in  his  shirt  and  breeches  — 
'twas  sweatin'  hot,  like  I  told  you.     I  dunno  why  we  always 
called  Croghan    'little,'  less'n  'twas  becuz  he  was  such   a 
young  feller.     He  wan't  much  over  twenty  —  jest  a  boy  — 
jest  a  big  tall  lanky  boy  like  they  breed  'em  down  in  Kaintuck 

—  that's  where  he  come  from.      'You  tell  th'  gin'ral   I'm 


20  NATHAN    BURKE 

here,  an'  by  God,  here  I  stay!'  he  said  to  me.  Lord!  I 
remember  like  it  was  yesterday.  They  was  a  Inj  un  woman  — 
a  right  good-lookin'  young  squaw  —  settin'  in  th'  corner  o' 
th'  cabin  plattin'  a  basket.  Thar  she  sot  an'  platted,  like  a 
stone  image,  an'  never  even  looked  up  at  Croghan  swearin' 
an'  damnin'  an'  stridin'  up  an'  down,  bitin'  his  finger-nails." 

"An'  did  he  sure  'nough  stay  ?"  asks  the  boy,  with  shining 
eyes. 

"Oh,  yes,  he  stayed  —  yes,  little  Georgie  stayed.  They 
was  'bout  a  hundred  an'  thirty  of  us  at  th'  last  —  in  th' 
fight,  I  mean,  when  .Proctor  sent  up  th'  Forty-first  agin  us. 
They  was  more  men  'n  that  inside  th'  stockade,  but  mostly 
sick  —  fever  'n  ager  —  so's  they  couldn't  fight.  Some  of 
'em  did,  anyhow.  I  ric'lect  I  was  chillin'  myself  regular,  but, 
by  criminy,  th'  fight  come  on  my  off  day!  "  —  He  chuckled  at 
this  as  if  it  had  been  the  finest  joke  in  the  world.  —  "How'd 
th'  fight  begin  ?  Why,  it  begun  like  this :  th'  British  gin'ral 
hed  a  man  —  what  they  call  a  non-commissioned  orficer, 
y'know  —  to  come  up  to  th'  fort  under  a  white  flag,  with  two- 
three  Injuns  an'  some  soldiers  with  him,  an'  he  giv  a  letter  to 
Croghan  with  'Come  out  from  behind  yer  little  Tom-fool 
breastworks,  er  I'll  blow  ye  to  kingdom  come,'  in  it  —  not 
jest  them  words,  but  put  kinder  civil-like,  ye  unnerstan'. 
An'  Major  Croghan  he  sent  back  word:  'Blow  an'  be 
damn,  then!'  That  was  all  th'  way  it  begun.  'Twas 
kinder  like  what  they  say  'bout  a  short  horse  soon  curried. 
An'  what  we  done  to  'em,  Nat,  what  we  done  to  'em  — ! 
That  fool  Britisher  hadn't  no  better  sense  'n  to  march  his 
men  in  three  columns  right  up  agin  th'  stockade.  They 
come  right  up,  right  up  agin  our  rifles  they  come  —  braver 
men  I  never  see.  I  swanny,  'twas  a  shame  ! "  He  would  fall 
silent,  with  his  strong  old  yellow  fangs  clenched  on  the  pipe- 
stem  as  they  sat  by  the  fire  glimmering  under  the  lee  of  a  log 
in  some  twilight  nook  of  woods.  "Did  you  kill  any  of  'em, 
Jake?"  the  boy  would  ask  him.  To  which  he  sometimes 
made  answer  with  an  unwonted  diffidence  or  indirection  that 
powder  'n  shot  come  pretty  durn  high  them  days,  an'  ye 
couldn't  afford  to  waste  none.  "But  did  ye  ever  kill  a  man 
fer  certain  sure,  an'  see  him  fall  ?  "  Nat  persisted.  But  though 
it  was  hardly  possible  to  doubt  that  in  the  trade  of  war  Jake 
had  slain  men,  from  some  obscure  reason  —  it  may  well  have 


MR.   BURKE'S   PEDIGREE  21 

been  a  sort  of  tribute  in  its  way  to  the  other's  youth  and  to 
his  own  dim  notions  of  what  was  decent  and  humane  —  he 
would  never  acknowledge  it  in  plain  words.  "  I  reckon  ye've 
seen  me  aim  —  at  squirrels  an'  such,  ain't  ye  ?"  he  once  said 
after  Nathan  had  pressed  him  pretty  close  about  the  battle 
of  the  River  Raisin;  "yes,  you've  seen  me  aim  plenty  times, 
I  guess.  Ever  see  me  miss?"  "No,"  said  the  youngster, 
puzzled.  "Well,  I  aimed." 

Even  at  his  drunkest  he  was  still  thus  uncommunicative; 
being,  in  fact,  one  of  those  obdurate  topers  who  grow  more 
and  more  silent  as  the  bottle  lowers.  He  never  drank  while 
actually  in  the  pursuit  of  game,  when  he  was  capable  of  going 
twenty-four  hours,  perhaps  longer,  without  food  or  even 
water;  nor  did  he  ever  offer  Nat  a  sip,  or  allow  him  to  carry 
the  flask.  Nathan  used  to  go  to  sleep  curled  up  under  the 
ragged  and  foul  old  army-blanket  that  served  them  for  bed 
on  these  expeditions,  leaving  Darnell  sitting  cross-legged  by 
the  fire,  smoking  and  musing,  with  the  bottle  between  his 
knees,  and  the  light  playing  redly  over  his  hard,  weather- 
beaten  features  and  high  'coonskin  cap.  And  anon,  the  boy, 
who  was  an  alert  sleeper,  would  start  from  his  dreams  just 
in  time  to  grab  Jake  away  from  the  bed  of  coals,  where  he 
seemed  to  have  an  ingrained  propensity  to  tumble  the  mo 
ment  the  last  drop  was  drained.  He  never  objected  to 
Nathan's  rude  ministrations,  or  became  either  hilarious  or 
maudlin  or  violent;  the  liquor  affected  him  (I  have  since 
thought)  much  as  opium  might,  reducing  him  to  a  kind  of 
pleasant  torpor.  Once  in  a  rare  moment  of  confidence,  for 
he  was  not  much  given  to  talking  directly  about  himself, 
he  told  the  boy  that  he  had  "beautiful  dreams"  when  he 
was  drunk  —  "  beautiful, "  he  repeated  with  a  vague  look  and 
gesture.  Heaven  knows  what  they  could  have  been,  poor 
old  Jake  !  Perhaps,  after  all,  the  mutual  responsibility  of 
their  companionship  was  good  for  the  man,  and  not  entirely 
harmful  for  the  boy. 

As  I  remember  him,  however,  Nat  came  very  early  to  a 
sense  of  responsibilities  and  obligations.  It  would  be  im 
possible  to  say  at  what  age  it  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  he 
was  living  upon  the  bounty  of  strangers,  beholden  to  their 
good-will  for  the  bite  he  ate,  the  clothes  on  his  back,  the  roof 
over  his  head.  When  I  look  back  now,  it  seems  as  if  he  must 


22  NATHAN    BURKE 

have  been  born  with  that  knowledge  and  with  the  determi 
nation  to  even  the  score.  Yet  I  know  that  he  was  merely  an 
ordinarily  bright  lad  of  an  industrious  and  conscientious  dis 
position;  there  were  thousands  like  Nathan  Burke  growing 
up  all  over  the  country.  If  he  hoed  the  garden  and  milked 
the  cows  and  lent  a  hand  to  hanging  out  Mrs.  Williams's  wash 
a  trifle  more  willingly  and  consistently  than  the  other  boys, 
it  must  have  been  due,  first  of  all,  to  some  innate  distaste  for 
idleness  and  only  in  secondary  degree  to  that  desire  to  be 
" worth  his  keep"  at  which  I  have  hinted.  'Liph  and  his 
wife  were  too  good-hearted  to  thrust  his  dependence  in  his 
face;  they  were  assuredly  not  conscious  of  making  any  differ 
ence  between  him  and  their  own  children;  and  Nat  himself 
was  not  at  all  quicker  or  cleverer  or  better-looking  than  'Liph 
junior  or  any  of  the  rest.  He  did,  indeed,  display  more 
aptitude  for  learning;  but  that  was  the  result  of  a  sort  of 
abstract  talent  for  application.  He  had  a  fancy  for  slogging 
away  until  the  task  was  done,  the  thing,  whatever  it  might 
be,  accomplished;  and,  being  set  to  get  his  letters  out  of  an 
old  almanac,  got  them  with  proportionate  time  and  trouble, 
exactly  as  he  would  have  achieved  his  stent  at  wood-chop 
ping  or  what-not,  undeterred  by  any  desire  to  go  fishing  or 
berry-picking.  With  the  almanac  his  literary  labors  may 
almost  be  said  to  have  begun  and  ended;  it  came  with  cer 
tain  bottles  of  a  patent  medicine,  by  name  " Vaughn's  Vege 
table  Lithontriptic  Mixture."  This  remedy  was  a  mighty 
favorite  in  its  day,  curing  everything  from  chilblains  to 
cholera  —  according  to  the  universal  habit  of  patent  medi 
cines.  There  never  lacked  a  bottle  on  the  chimney-piece; 
and  to  this  day  Mr.  Burke  observes  a  greater  grace  and  skill 
in  his  capital  V*8  than  he  can  command  in  the  making  of  any 
other  letter. 

All  these  details  lack  singularly  in  dash  and  color.  A  man 
who  was  born  and  brought  up  in  a  log-cabin  sixty  years  ago 
should,  in  conscience,  have  learned  to  read  out  of  the  Bible, 
and  studied  lying  on  the  floor  winter  nights,  by  the  aid  of  a 
flaming  pine  knot.  But  there  was  no  pine  in  the  country; 
and  although  the  Williamses  possessed  a  Bible,  Nathan,  dread 
ful  to  confess,  never  felt  the  slightest  curiosity  to  open  one 
until  years  later!  His  limited  acquaintance  with  Webster's 
spelling-book  and  Vaughn  satisfied  him.  And  up  to  the 


MR.    BURKE'S   PEDIGREE  23 

spring  day  when  Jake  Darnell  stopped  'Liph  on  the  homeward 
road  to  tell  him  that  he  had  got  the  place  with  Duceys  for 
Nat  on  trial,  nothing  noteworthy  had  happened  in  the  boy's 
whole  life.  Once  on  a  three  days'  trip  with  Jake  he  had  shot 
a  deer;  once  he  fished  the  Williams  baby  (the  baby  of  the 
hour;  there  was  a  fresh  one  at  regular  intervals),  a  two-year- 
old  girl,  out  of  a  pool  of  the  Scioto,  where  she  had  fallen  over 
her  head,  and  carried  her  bawling  to  her  mother  —  a  feat 
for  which  he  received  a  deal  of  unmerited  gratitude  and  ap 
plause.  And  once  he  fell  from  the  hay-loft  and  dislocated 
his  shoulder.  This  last  was  a  real  event;  'Liph  was  called 
in  from  the  fields  to  saddle  one  of  the  lumbering  old  plough- 
horses  and  journey  in  town,  post-haste,  for  the  doctor.  He 
returned,  not  with  the  doctor,  but  instead  with  a  long,  gawky, 
big-nosed,  young  medical  student  who  bandaged  up  the  in 
jured  member  after  putting  it  in  place  with  a  dexterity  and 
gentleness  far  surpassing  that  of  any  woman,  so  that  for  days 
and  months  afterwards  Nathan  remembered  the  very  look 
and  touch  of  his  lean,  clean,  strong,  steady  hands.  He  dosed 
the  family  all  around  for  chills  and  fever,  laughed  at  the 
Lithontriptic  Mixture,  and  told  Mrs.  Williams  to  throw  it  in 
the  fire  —  and  so  took  his  departure  much  as  he  had  come, 
like  a  gust  of  fresh  air  on  a  dull  day.  Nathan  worked  all 
summer  helping  Tim  Pascoe  build  his  dam  to  get  the  money 
wherewith  to  pay  'Liph;  although,  to  be  sure,  the  bill  had 
not  been  large,  but  neither  were  a  boy's  wages  in  those  days. 
To  do  him  justice  Williams  took  it  with  reluctance,  even 
remonstrating  with  the  lad:  "Lord,  I  ain't  needin'  it  —  I 
ain't  doggin'  ye  fer  it,  Nat,"  he  said  kindly.  "'Twas  doin' 
my  work  ye  hurt  yerself,  anyhow." 

"I  want  to  pay  it,"  said  Nathan,  stubborn  and  brief- 
spoken  as  usual. 

He  and  Pascoe  did  not  erect  a  monument  more  lasting  than 
brass  in  that  forlorn  old  dam;  it  was  little  more  than  a  ridge 
of  boulders  and  logs  piled  up  across  the  river,  constantly 
giving  away  with  a  devastating  rush  of  water,  and  so  low  as 
to  be  quite  beneath  the  surface  during  the  spring  freshets. 
It  sufficed  the  Pascoes,  who  were  a  shiftless,  improvident, 
happy-go-easy  lot  —  yet  I  should  speak  more  gently  of  them, 
for  they  are  all  dead  this  long  while;  and  they  were  Nat 
Burke's  friends;  and,  in  fact,  it  was  Tim  Pascoe  himself  who 


24  NATHAN   BURKE 

took  Nathan  up  and  brought  him  into  town  in  his  wagon  the 
last  five  miles  of  the  journey,  and  set  him  down,  finally,  at 
Mr.  William  Ducey's  gate. 

NOTE.  Mr.  James  Sharpless,  referred  to  in  this  chapter,  died  in 
1906.  He  was  at  one  time  very  prominent  in  his  profession,  and  was 
the  author  of  two  books:  "With  the  Argonauts;  Studies  and 
Sketches,"  Bayard  Bros.,  San  Francisco,  1875;  and  "Recollections 
of  a  Veteran  Journalist,"  2  vols.,  Sanford,  Megrue  &  Co.,  Columbus, 
Ohio,  1886. 

I  went  to  see  the  old  gentleman,  in  connection  with  this  work,  a 
little  while  before  his  death,  and  found  him  quite  sprightly  still, 
though  much  enfeebled  in  body  at  the  advanced  age  of  eighty-four 
years.  He  was  very  willing  to  talk  about  the  general,  of  whom  he 
spoke  not  at  all  sentimentally,  but  with  the  beautiful  and  touching 
affection  which  exists,  it  would  seem,  only  between  men.  "Burke 
could  have  had  any  public  office  in  this  State,  if  he  had  chosen  to  go 
after  it,"  he  said  to  me;  "but  he  always  scouted  the  notion,  and  he 
used  to  tell  me  with  a  laugh  that  he  was  no  orator  as  Brutus  was  — 
meaning  me,  Madame.  He  didn't  like  public  speaking,  you  know; 
and  he  never  had  the  slightest  conception  of  his  own  personal  popu 
larity.  Why,  I  remember  there  was  a  man  here  in  town  named 
Carrington  —  a  hardware  merchant,  a  very  good  sort  of  fellow  — 
who  looked  something  like  Nathan  and  was  often  taken  for  him  — 
which,  I  have  no  doubt,  Carrington  rather  liked.  But  Nat  remarked 
to  me  that  it  must  be  very  annoying  to  Carrington  to  be  continually- 
spoken  to  for  himself  — '  and, '  says  he,  perfectly  simple  and  seri 
ous,  'it's  the  most  extraordinary  thing,  Jim,  but  nobody  ever  takes 
me  for  Carrington !"'  —  M.  S.  W. 


CHAPTER  III 
CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME 

THE  Ducey  house,  like  all  the  other  city  houses  in  Nathan's 
limited  experience,  seemed  to  him  a  prodigiously  handsome 
and  imposing  edifice.  It  was  brick;  it  was  two  stories  high, 
with  windows  glittering  in  regular  tiers  of  three  across  the 
front,  and  a  front  door  with  a  fan-light  above  it  and  slips  of 
glass  along  the  sides,  and  a  porch,  and  a  flight  of  stone  steps 
and  a  brass  door-knob;  it  was  set  back  in  an  ample  yard  of 
trees,  flower-beds,  and  the  beautiful  blue-grass  turf,  well- 
nigh  an  extinct  growth  with  us  now,  so  common  then  that 
Nat,  who  perhaps  did  not  possess  much  of  an  eye  for  natural 
beauties,  scarcely  noticed  it.  The  approach  was  by  a  straight, 
brick-paved  walk,  where  he  was  fated  to  spend  more  than  one 
hot,  toilsome  hour,  gouging  out  the  weeds  that  sprouted  peri 
odically  between  every  brick.  Had  he  known  it,  the  prospect 
would  not  have  discouraged  him;  he  never  feared  work;  but 
it  was  with  a  good  deal  of  inward  tremor,  proceeding  mostly 
from  anxiety  as  to  whether  he  was  going  to  "suit, "  that  he 
went  skreeking  up  the  walk  in  his  unaccustomed  boots,  and 
so  around  to  the  back  door,  following  a  hint  of  Pascoe's. 
"Th'  help  always  comes  in  an'  goes  out  that  way,"  this  sage 
had  warned  him;  "th'  front  door's  for  folks,  ye  know."  At 
the  rear  his  heart  was  unexpectedly  gladdened  by  the  familiar 
spectacle  of  a  wash-bench,  milk-crocks  sunning,  the  woodshed, 
and  the  grindstone.  He  beheld  the  features  of  his  prospec 
tive  kingdom;  here  was  the  stable,  here  a  little  garden-patch 
behind  neat  white  palings;  there  was  a  carriage-house,  and 
chicken-coops.  None  of  this,  perhaps,  was  pretty,  but  there 
was  a  homely  grace  of  thrift,  cleanliness,  and  order  about  the 
place  that  at  once  pleased  and  awed  him.  The  boy  felt  a 
kind  of  dutiful  eagerness  to  keep  it  all  in  that  condition  and 
better ;  he'd  show  them  if  they  gave  him  the  chance  !  All  the 

25 


26  NATHAN   BURKE 

city  yards,  he  had  noticed  as  they  came  along,  were  kept 
thus  tidy;  the  difference  between  them  and  the  unlovely 
disorder  —  a  disorder  which  sometimes  had  not  even  the 
excuse  of  being  convenient  —  of  the  Williamses'  surroundings 
had  caught  his  eye.  This,  then,  was  the  way  in  which  city- 
folks  liked  things  kept;  — very  good,  give  him  a  chance  and 
he'd  show  them  !  The  capital  city  of  our  State  was  not  a 
large  one  in  the  early  thirties ;  and  Nathan  did  not  suffer  - 
as  youth  is  poetically  supposed  to  —  in  the  transition  to 
bricks  and  mortar  from  the  wide,  grave,  silent  spaces  of  his 
backwoods.  Truth  to  tell,  there  was  no  such  preponderance 
of  the  bricks  and  mortar;  it  was  a  pleasant  little  town, 
characterless  and  immature  as  most  other  middle  western 
towns  of  its  era;  and  doubtless  there  were  double  files  of 
trees  along  the  streets,  and  wide  yards;  and  comfortable 
homes  like  that  of  the  William  Duceys,  with  tumbledown 
shanties  next  door.  Perhaps  the  new  Penitentiary  loomed 
grimly  on  the  confines  where  Nathan  had  entered;  and  it 
may  be  they  were  just  laying  the  foundations  of  the  Capitol, 
and  tall  derricks  straddled  above  the  recumbent  stones  in 
the  square  bounded  by  State  and  Broad  streets,  the  square 
whereon  the  Ducey  windows  looked  and  met  the  morning 
sun.  But  so  naively  self-absorbed  is  youth,  so  strangely 
unobservant  of  its  environment,  so  pathetically  expectant  of 
the  eternal  To-morrow,  and  oblivious  of  the  eternal  To-day, 
that  when  I  sit  down  and  straightly  endeavor  to  call  up  a  pic 
ture  of  the  first  city  I  ever  knew,  I  find  myself  groping  in  a  fog 
of  formless  memories.  When  people  say  to  me,  "Why,  you 
recollect  all  about  such  a  time  or  place  —  you  were  a  boy 
then,"  I  think  within  me,  Good  God,  and  what  has  become  of 
that  boy  ?  He  is  dead  —  gone  and  irretrievable,  along  with 
those  departed  days.  Challenge  his  memory,  indeed!  It  is 
only  with  a  strain  and  painful  effort  that  I  put  aside  the  cur 
tain  of  the  years  and  call  to  him. 

Nathan  marched  up  to  the  back  door  and  knocked;  and 
was  presently  opened  to  by  a  comely,  fresh-cheeked  Irish 
girl,  who  started  back  with  a  truly  Hibernian  screech  of 
mingled  consternation  and  pleasurable  excitement  at  view 
of  this  long-legged  and  shock-haired  Corydon,  gun  in  hand. 

"It  ain't  loaded,"  Nathan  assured  her,  detecting  her 
affrighted  glance;  another  woman,  a  fleshier  and  somewhat 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME     27 

older  duplicate  of  the  first,  seated  at  the  table  hard  by, 
joined  in  the  flurry  of  giggles  and  broken  ejaculations  to  all 
the  saints.  And  Nat,  seeing  that  his  statement  had  pro 
duced  no  effect,  walked  in  without  further  ceremony,  an 
nouncing  succinctly:  "I've  come  to  see  about  th'  place  for 
doin'  chores.  My  name's  Burke." 

This  covered  the  whole  ground,  and  had  the  odd  result  of 
quieting  and  silencing  the  feminine  uproar  immediately, 
although  Nathan  had  said  it  in  no  such  intention;  he  merely 
wanted  to  make  clear  his  position  at  once.  The  two  women 
stared  at  him,  and  he  faced  them  tranquilly.  "Tell  Mr. 
Ducey  I'm  here,  ma'am,  will  you  ?"  he  said,  addressing  the 
nearest,  straightforwardly.  He  had  already  decided  in 
wardly  that  neither  of  these  could  be  Nance's  Mrs.  Ducey  - 
and  whoever  or  whatever  else  they  were  he  conceived  to  be 
no  business  of  his.  They  exchanged  a  glance  and  wink; 
then  both  reddened  and  began  to  clatter  confusedly  amongst 
the  dishes,  as  they  saw  that  Nat  had  observed  it.  The  boy's 
eye,  quick  and  steady  by  nature,  embraced  without  conscious 
effort  every  smallest  detail  of  the  place  and  people;  Darnell 
had  not  been  far  wrong  in  his  estimate  of  Nathan's  rather 
Indian  gifts.  He  stood  before  the  cook  and  housemaid, 
unembarrassed,  in  a  boy's  cool  detachment  from  the  world  of 
women  and  their  incomprehensible  ways.  The  girl  who  had 
opened  the  door  jumped  up  and  ran  into  the  farther  house 
upon  his  errand;  and  after  a  moment  the  cook  remarked 
affably :  — 

"Ye're  from  the  counthry?" 

"Yes,  "said  Nat. 

"  Ye've  niver  been  in  town  befure,  I  dinnaw  ?" 

"Once." 

"It's  yersilf  that  can  shoot  wid  that  gun,  now,  ain't  it?" 
she  said  ingratiatingly. 

"Yes." 

She  set  about  her  work,  with  an  expression  of  baffled  and 
a  little  puzzled  amusement.  It  was  a  rout,  something  simi 
lar  to  that  of  the  British  charge  at  Fort  Stephenson.  Yet 
Nat  had  no  desire  to  show  himself  either  surly  or  uncommuni 
cative;  it  never  occurred  to  him  to  expand  his  answers  to  her 
questions,  or  to  ask  any  in  his  turn.  .  He  waited  patiently; 
and,  an  entry-door  swinging  ajar,  he  heard  voices  in  the  ad- 


28  NATHAN    BURKE 

jacent  room.  There  was  a  child's  voice,  a  man's  heavier 
grumble,  and  one  not  loud  nor  high,  but  of  an  extraordinary 
carrying  quality,  a  peculiar  distinctness  in  its  unsubdued,  yet 
sweet,  vibrations. 

"It's  the  new  boy  about  the  place,  William.  William, 
why  don't  you  answer  ?  It's  the  new  boy  —  I  saw  him  go 
past  the  window  —  he  had  a  gun  —  a  gun  of  all  things  !  No, 
Georgie,  you  can't  go  and  see  him  —  no  —  you  can  see  the 
gun  some  other  time  —  Georgie,  I  said  no  !  He  looked  dirty 
-  isn't  he  dirty,  Norah  ?  You  don't  know  ?  Well,  mercy,  I 
don't  suppose  you  do  know;  they  don't  seem  to  know  the 
difference  between  being  clean  and  dirty  in  Ireland,  anyhow. 
I  don't  want  you  to  go  near  him,  Georgie  —  you  don't  want 
to  touch  a  dirty  boy  like  that,  do  you  ?  What's  that,  Wil 
liam  ?  Oh,  pshaw,  he  can't  hear  me  —  and  besides  he  is 
dirty,  Will  —  I  just  caught  a  glimpse  of  him  and  I  know  he's 
dirty  —  all  those  country  people  that  come  in  the  store  are. 
I  don't  want  the  children  to  go  near  him  —  maybe  there're 
things  in  his  hair  —  he  seemed  to  have  very  thick  hair,  and 
I  don't  believe  it's  ever  been  washed  — 

The  cook  closed  the  door  hastily,  with  a  quick  conscious 
glance  at  Nathan.  It  opened,  however,  almost  immediately, 
with  a  species  of  delicate  bustle,  a  light,  gracious  hurly-burly 
which  Nathan  grew  in  time  to  recognize  as  the  invariable 
accompaniment  of  all  Mrs.  Ducey's  actions.  She  stood  on 
the  threshold,  and  the  boy  eyed  her  with  an  unmoved  coun 
tenance  as  he  has  since  been  told,  but  in  reality  stirred  to  his 
depths  by  a  wondering,  delighted,  even  reverent  admiration. 
He  understood  at  a  stroke  all  Nance's  rhapsody;  he  had  not 
dreamed  there  could  exist  on  this  dull  earth  a  loveliness  so 
splendid  and  compelling,  although  he  could  not  then  —  nor 
now  —  set  down  in  terms  its  changeful  and  evasive  bright 
ness.  He  did  not  know  whether  Mrs.  Ducey's  features  were 
regular  or  no,  her  eyes  gray  or  hazel  —  it  did  not  matter.  She 
seemed  taller  than  most  women ;  her  movements  of  an  incom 
parable  grace,  buoyancy,  and  vigor  springing  from  abound 
ing  good  health,  good  spirits,  good  nature.  She  dominated 
the  little  company;  clothes  and  setting  surrendered  to  her; 
the  fresh  morning-gown  she  wore  was,  I  dare  say,  only  a 
cotton  print,  but  it  flowed  about  her  in  folds  of  an  antique 
nobility;  her  clear  eyes,  her  brilliant  hair,  the  very  glow  in 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME     29 

her  cheeks  irradiated  the  kitchen,  and  she  looked  upon  us 
from  her  heights  like  a  star. 

"Is  that  the  boy  —  are  you  the  boy?  Oh,  mercy,  that 
gun's  dangerous  —  didn't  you  know  any  better  than  to  bring 
a  gun  ?  You  can't  go  hunting  here,  you  know,  there's  noth 
ing  to  hunt  —  take  that  gun  away  —  take  it  outdoors  — " 

"It  ain't  loaded,  ma'am,"  said  Nathan,  while  the  two 
handmaids  looked  on  with  covert  grins.  "It  can't  hurt 
anybody." 

"Hm!"  Mrs.  Ducey  gave  an  indescribable  little  musical 
grunt,  and  went  on  as  if  he  had  not  spoken.  "  Take  that  gun 
away  —  it's  dangerous  —  I  won't  have  any  guns  around  the 
house  —  "  ske  raised  her  sweet  voice  in  an  accent  of  uncon 
trolled  terror.  "Come  away  from  that  gun,  Georgie  — 
don't  go  near  it  —  come  away  —  it  might  go  off  and  kill 
you — " 

"Aw,  he  said  it  wasn't  loaded,  ma;  it  can't  hurt  me,"  said 
Georgie,  fingering  the  bright  barrel  of  the  weapon  curiously. 
He  was  a  sallow  and  plainly  dyspeptic  youngster  of  twelve  or 
so,  with  a  large  head  and  very  large,  soft,  dark  eyes,  in  which 
there  was  an  expression  of  appealing  feebleness,  reminding 
Nathan  vaguely  of  certain  baby  animals. 

"Georgie,  did  you  hear  mother?     Let  the  gun  alone — " 

"Aw,  Ma- 

"Drop  the  gun,  sonny!"  said  Nathan. 

The  boy  dropped  it  promptly  at  this  command,  though  he 
had  wholly  disregarded  his  mother's.  He  edged  over  to  her 
side,  hunching  his  shoulders  peevishly,  yet  with  a  look  of 
fright,  oddly  out  of  proportion  to  the  rebuke  he  had  received 
—  if  rebuke  it  could  be  called,  for  Nat  had  spoken  gently. 
"You've  got  awfully  funny  eyes  —  kind  of  bright  and  shiny 
like  our  carving-knife,"  he  commented  with  agreeable  free 
dom. 

"Georgie,  hush,  you  mustn't  say  things  like  that  about 
people's  looks,  no  matter  how  queer  they  are  —  and  besides 
the  boy  has  very  nice  eyes  —  I'm  sure  he  has  very  nice  eyes 
indeed,  hasn't  he,  William?"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  with  an  in 
tention  so  evidently  and  eagerly  kind  that  Nathan,  if  he  felt 
some  surprise  at  this  candid  appraisement,  still  could  not 
resent  it.  And,  being  in  no  sense  a  judge  of  manners  or  the 
world,  he  accepted  this  frankly  with  the  rest  of  his  experi- 


30  NATHAN    BURKE 

ences.  "  George,  come  here  to  mother  —  remember  what  I 
told  you  -  "  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  anxiously.  She  made  sound 
lessly  with  her  lips  the  outlines  of  the  words  "  don't  touch 
him"  and  supplemented  the  pantomime  by  gathering  her 
crisp  skirts  aside  in  illustration.  George  retreated  obedi 
ently.  None  of  this  escaped  Nathan;  he  had  never  heard  of 
lepers  at  the  time,  or  he  might  have  felt  like  one;  but  he  made 
no  such  comparison,  merely  holding  his  ground,  with  the 
color  rising  a  little  in  his  sun-browned  face.  And  Mr.  Ducey 
following  up  his  wife  at  that  moment,the  youth  was  too  occu 
pied  with  the  first  view  of  his  future  employer  to  spare  much 
attention  elsewhere.  He  thought  that  Georgie  looked  rather 
like  his  father,  who  was  a  man  perhaps  about  thirty-five  years 
old,  dark,  tall,  and  slender,  with  the  same  appearance  of 
physical  weakness,  and  the  same  big,  sentimental  eyes  — 
sentimental  not  being  at  this  time,  however,  a  word  in  active 
use  in  Nat's  vocabulary;  he  would  have  put  Mr.  Ducey 
down  as  being  slightly  sawney.  He  stood  up  straight,  and 
answered  the  other's  questions  with  an  instinctive  concise 
ness.  He  may  have  been  a  little  self-conscious,  knowing 
that  his  measure  was  being  taken,  and  very  eager  to  "suit." 
Yet  if  the  Duceys,  husband  and  wife,  if  little  George  yonder, 
if  the  Irishwomen  ostentatiously  slopping  about  with  their 
mops  and  dishpans  and  sending  him  a  furtive  look  from  time 
to  time,  if  these  were  all  taking  his  measure,  so  was  Nathan 
taking  theirs  —  and  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  there  is 
no  tribunal  so  stern,  so  exacting  and  pitiless,  as  that  of  youth. 
At  fifteen  we  are  as  hard  as  flint,  at  fifty  little  better  than 
a  miserable  bog  of  compromises  —  so  does  the  whirligig  of 
time  bring  in  its  revenges!  I  do  not  say  that  Mr.  Nat  dis 
played  such  preternatural  acuteness  as  to  gauge  his  new 
employers  upon  a  moment's  acquaintance  with  ruthless 
accuracy ;  he  was  no  marvel  of  precocity.  In  fact,  he  was  not 
conscious  of  seeking  to  understand  and  weigh  them  at  all.  I 
cannot  so  much  as  tell  when  that  inevitable  process  began; 
but  even  the  trivial  details  of  this  first  meeting  must  have 
counted  for  something  in  it,  and  the  earliest  impression  never 
quite  wore  away. 

"He  seems  to  be  a  willing  boy  —  but  the  worst  looking," 
said  Mrs.  Ducey  in  the  entry,  as  the  master  and  mistress  of 
the  house  concluded  this  momentous  interview;  "I  don't 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME     31 

know  how  we  can  have  him  drive  the  carriage.  You'll  have 
to  give  him  some  of  your  clothes,  William;  I  mean  the  old 
ones  that  you're  going  to  throw  away  —  they'll  be  plenty 
good  enough  for  him.  'There's  that  suit  I  was  going  to  give 
to  that  old  blind  beggar  that  comes  around  —  they'll  do 
nicely  for  —  what's  his  name  ?  Nathan.  He  may  look  a 
little  better  after  he's  cleaned  up  —  Oh,  fiddle-de-dee,  he 
can't  hear  me;  you're  all  the  time  s-h-h-ing  me,  Will.  I 
believe  you  don't  like  me  to  talk  at  all.  What  ?  When  you 
mumble  so  low  that  way,  I  can't  understand  what  you're 
saying.  Hurt  what  f  Hurt  the  boy's  feelings  ?  William,  I 
think  it's  very  unkind  of  you  to  say  that  —  yes,  I  do  —  it's 
unkind.  You  know  I  never  would  hurt  anybody's  feelings. 
Oh,  now,  you  needn't  come  around  me  that  way  -  "  the  rest 
died  off  somewhere  in  the  interior  of  the  house.  And,  in  a 
few  minutes,  little  George  came  running  back  to  the  kitchen. 

"Ma  says  I'm  to  take  you  out  to  the  stable,  and  show  you 
where  you're  to  sleep,"  he  informed  Nathan  with  a  good  deal 
of  importance.  "I'm  going  to  carry  your  gun.  I  know  all 
about  guns  —  I  can  shoot  first-rate,  I  — 

"Did  your  ma  say  you  could  ?"  Nat  asked  him.  The  boy 
looked  him  straight  in  the  eye  as  he  answered:  "Yes — of 
course.  She  said  for  me  to  carry  the  gun  —  she  said  — 

Nathan  folded  his  arms,  and  surveyed  the  other  from  his 
lank,  slab-sided  height,  judicially.  There  was  a  momentary 
silence  in  the  kitchen;  Bridget  and  Nora  suspended  their 
rolling-pin  and  knife-board  activities  to  watch  and  listen  with 
an  unusual  interest. 

"I  don't  guess  she  said  anything  like  that,  Georgie,"  said 
Nat,  picking  up  the  musket  himself  and  moving  towards  the 
door;  "I  kinder  guess  she  said  you  weren't  to  go  near  it, 
ain't  that  so?"  he  suggested  pleasantly. 

"Aw,  she  did  too  say  I  could  carry  it  — " 

The  cook  and  housemaid  burst  into  strident  laughter. 
"That's  the  toime  ye  got  come  up  with,  Jarge,"  said  the 
former,  wiping  her  eyes  on  her  apron.  Nathan  did  not  laugh 
himself,  he  only  grinned  a  little  as  he  followed  his  young  guide 
out-of-doors.  The  latter  did  not  appear  at  all  crestfallen  or 
shamefaced  at  the  late  exposure;  his  soft,  pathetic  eyes  had 
not  even  wavered. 

"They  haven't  got  any  sense,"  he  observed  cheerfully  to 


32  NATHAN   BURKE 

Nathan,  with  a  backward  shrug  towards  the  kitchen;  "and 
Ma  don't  know  anything,  either.  Say,  lemme  carry  it,  will 
you  ?  It's  yours,  ain't  it  ?  Say,  lemme  carry  it."  He  laid 
his  small  hands  on  the  heavy  rosewood  stock  of  the  weapon 
and  sought  to  wrest  it  from  its  owner. 

"  You'd  better  mind  yer  mother  fer  oncet,  seems  to  me," 
said  Nathan.  "  You  don't  want  to  worry  her,  do  ye  ?  That 
ain't  no  man's  way  to  do.  S'posin'  she  is  kinder  pernickety 
'bout  th'  gun?  That's  th'  way  wimmen  is,  I  guess;  they 
can't  help  it.  Ye  don't  want  to  worry  'em;  'tain't  fair. 
You're  a  man,  y'know."  He  shifted  the  gun  to  his  shoulder 
out  of  the  boy's  reach,  struck  —  and  rather  disagreeably  — 
by  his  persistence. 

"Aw,  she  don't  know  anything.  It  ain't  loaded,  and  she's 
scared  just  the  same;  she's  just  silly  'nough  to  be  'fraid  of  its 
hurting  me.  Lemme  carry  it,  will  you?" 

Nat  went  on  silently,  the  boy  dogging  him  with  a  kind  of 
feeble  determination,  not  wholly  childish;  curiously  femi 
nine,  in  fact.  "Ma'd  never  know  it,  anyhow  —  she'll  never 
find  out!" 

"Everything  gits  found  out  first  er  last,  I  reckon,"  said 
Nathan,  announcing,  without  knowing  it,  one  of  the  great 
est  and  most  stable  truths  of  life ;  he  was  simply  casting  about 
for  some  argument  that  would  impress  this  unruly  youngster. 
George  Ducey  lacked  only  three  years  or  so  of  Nat's  own  age, 
but  he  seemed  to  the  latter  unconscionably  babyish.  Perhaps 
the  hard  circumstances  of  backwoods  life  caused  children  to 
mature  earlier,  but  this  boy,  Nathan  thought,  was  helpless 
and  backward  in  comparison  with  little  Joe  Williams,  for  in 
stance.  You  could  have  trusted  Joe,  who  was  an  honest, 
sturdy,  not  too  bright  little  fellow,  almost  anywhere,  with 
anything;  he  was  no  bad  substitute  for  a  man,  with  his  round 
freckled  face,  his  brave  blue  eyes,  his  ragged  pantaloons  - 
Nathan  thought  of  him  with  a  sudden  warming  of  the 
heart.  But  this  small,  frail,  finicking  creature,  everlastingly 
babbling — !  For  George  was  everlastingly  babbling.  When 
he  had  finally  yielded  the  point  about  the  gun  —  which  Nat 
sagaciously  hung  up  on  a  pair  of  hooks  well  above  his  young 
friend's  head,  over  the  bed  in  the  little  stable-loft  room  which 
was  to  be  his  —  George,  following  him  about,  poured  out  a 
stream,  a  fountain,  a  flood  of  talk,  mostly  concerning  himself 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME     33 

in  whom  he  was,  as  is  not  infrequently  the  case,  very  ingenu 
ously  interested.  He  would  be  thirteen  his  next  birthday, 
that  would  be  in  the  fall,  in  November,  the  eleventh  of  No 
vember.  Everybody  always  gave  him  presents  on  his  birth 
day,  everybody,  the  hired  girls  and  all;  his  mother  didn't  like 
it  if  they  didn't  give  him  presents;  why,  once  she  sent  off 
the  hired  man  because  he  didn't  give  George  a  present.  His 
birthday  was  the  eleventh  of  November  —  not  the  tenth  nor 
the  twelfth,  but  the  eleventh.  He  guessed  Uncle  George  — 
his  Uncle  George  Marsh  that  he  was  named  after  —  he 
guessed  Uncle  George  would  give  him  a  gold  watch.  Uncle 
George  was  ever  so  rich;  he  was  the  richest  man  in  this  town, 
the  richest  man  in  the  United  States.  When  Georgie  grew 
up,  he  was  going  to  be  rich,  too;  he  was  going  to  be  the  richest 
man  in  the  world;  he  was  going  to  marry  a  beautiful  prin 
cess;  Ma  said  he  was  as  handsome  as  a  little  prince:  did 
Nathan  ever  see  a  prince?  The  princes  in  fairy  tales  always 
could  do  everything  —  he  could,  too.  There  wasn't  hardly 
anything  he  couldn't  do.  He  had  the  best  marks  of  anybody 
in  school;  they  didn't  like  it,  the  other  boys  didn't,  they 
were  jealous;  he  had  to  lick  'em;  he  could  lick  any  boy  in 
school;  he  had  licked  'em,  the  whole  school  — 

"My  !  You'll  git  me  kinder  skeered  of  ye,  if  ye  go  on  like 
that,"  said  Nat,  soberly;  " stand  off  a  little  further,  ye  might 
git  one  of  these  here  chips  in  yer  eye  —  they  fly  considerable 
when  I'm  choppin'." 

"I  wouldn't  hurt  you"  said  George,  with  condescension. 

"Thanky  kindly,"  said  Nathan,  governing  his  smile;  he 
might  have  spared  the  trouble,  for  George  was  as  impervious 
to  satire  as  he  was  to  reproof.  And  I  may  set  it  down  here 
for  a  contribution  to  the  sum  of  human  experience,  that  al 
though  I  have  met  in  my  time  many  mighty  performers  with 
the  ancient  English  weapon,  I  never  met  one  who  had  the 
slightest  sense  of  humor. 

"  They  're  all  jealous  of  me,  you  know,"  George  repeated  in 
explanation.  "I'm  always  head.  Ma  says  she  never  saw 
anything  like  the  way  I  do  my  sums  —  she  says  I've  got  a 
natural  head  for  figures.  I  can  add  just  like  —  just  like  — 
just  as  quick.  I  never  make  mistakes,  not  even  the  hardest 
sums  that  the  rest  of  'em  can't  do  at  all." 

"That    so?     What's    eighteen-thirty-five,    V     eighteen 


34  NATHAN    BURKE 

thirty-six,  V  eighteen-thirty-seven  all  put  together,  hey  ?  " 
Nat  inquired  in  the  benevolent  design  of  experimenting  on 
this  wondrous  balloon  —  finding  out  if  it  were  a  possible  thing 
to  prick  and  abase  it.  He  paused  to  stand  erect  and  wipe  his 
forehead  on  the  sleeve  of  his  shirt,  and  in  the  act  caught  sight 
of  a  little  girl  with  some  books  in  a  strap  coming  around  the 
corner  of  the  house. 

"  Eighteen-thirty-fi  ve  and  eighteen-thirty-six, ' '  said  George, 
elaborately,  "why  —  why  —  that  makes  —  it  makes  — " 

"Blue  lightning  on  the  add,  ain't  ye  ?"  said  Nat,  returning 
to  his  task;  and,  fortunately  for  George's  reputation  —  al 
though,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  it  would  have  taken  more  than 
this  to  cast  him  down — the  conversation  was  here  interrupted 
by  the  arrival  of  the  little  girl.  She  came  hesitatingly  toward 
them  along  the  walk  which  hereabouts  was  arched  over  with  a 
trellis  whereon  a  grape-vine  grew  and  twined ;  the  sun  winked 
overhead  amongst  swift,  incessant  April  clouds,  and  a  fan 
tastic  pattern  of  shadow  from  the  woodwork  netted  with  the 
yet  leafless  vine  played  over  her  as  she  moved.  It  was  the 
fashion  to  dress  little  girls  in  those  days  exactly  to  resemble 
their  mothers  and  grown-up  sisters,  in  a  solemn  propriety  of 
wide  skirts  and  coal-scuttle  headgear;  extraordinarily  meek- 
appearing  white  embroidered  pantalettes,  white  stockings, 
and  ankle-gaiters  decorated  the  lower  parts  of  them;  they 
wore  the  most  amazing  little  mantles  with  fringes  and  bugles, 
like  so  many  small  grandmothers.  This  child  differed  from 
her  elders  only  by  a  braid  of  brown  hair  almost  as  thick  as 
Nathan's  wrist,  trailing  down  her  back;  she  was  a  grave, 
inquiring,  and  rather  homely  young  person.  "Hello!"  said 
George,  "you  back?  Is  school  out  ?  Did  you  miss  any 
times  ?  How  many  times  did  you  miss  ?  " 

"I  didn't  miss  any,"  said  the  other,  coming  a  little  nearer 
and  surveying  Nathan  with  shy  curiosity. 

"Huh  —  don't  believe  it,"  said  George,  gallantly;  "you 
always  miss."  Nathan  silently  set  the  blade  of  the  axe  deep 
in  a  knotted  stick,  and  split  the  wood  in  halves. 

"My,  you're  strong,  ain't  you  ?"  said  the  little  girl,  coming 
nearer  him.  "  I  like  strong  people,"  she  added  after  a  moment, 
in  an  explanatory  tone.  "What's  your  name  ?" 

"His  name's  Nathan,"  interposed  George,  in  a  manner  so 
closely  duplicating  Mrs.  Ducey's  that  the  effect  was  startling; 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME    35 

it  some  way  conveyed  the  impression  of  entire  personal  dis 
regard,  as  if  the  speaker  were  alluding  to  a  post,  a  pet  animal, 
some  characterless  and  scarcely  sentient  creature.  "Ma 
says  you're  not  to  touch  him  —  he's  dirty." 

"  You  better  stand  out'n  th'  way,  er  I  might  nip  ye  with  th' 
axe,"  said  Nathan,  more  gruffly  than  was  natural  to  him. 
And  at  once  —  being  a  kindly  lad  —  felt  a  twinge  of  self- 
reproach  to  see  the  little  girl  sheer  off  from  his  neighborhood, 
obedient  and  rather  frightened.  "I  wouldn't  want  to  hurt 
ye,  y'know,"  he  said  gently. 

"She's  afraid  —  she's  a  'fraidy-cat,"  said  George,  with 
contempt;  "I  ain't  afraid.  I  ain't  afraid  of  anything  —  I'm 
just  as  brave!  I  wouldn't  be  afraid  of  —  of  a  whole  lot  of 
soldiers  with  guns.  I'd  go  right  up  to  'em  —  I  would,  if 
there  was  an  army.  What  would  you  do  ?  I  bet  you'd  run 
away!" 

"I  bet  I  would  too,"  said  Nathan,  chopping  steadily. 

"I  wouldn't  —  I'd  fight  'em  all." 

"You  couldn't  fight  an  army,  George  —  could  he  fight  a 
whole  army?"  said  the  little  girl,  reasonably  appealing  to 
Nathan. 

"Dunno,"  said  Nat.  "Mightn't  be  brave  to  run  away, 
but  'twould  be  better  sense.  Kinder  puts  me  in  mind  of 
what  a  old  Injun  oncet  said  to  a  man  I  know.  'Hungh!' 
he  says,  ' white  man  heap  fool.  Live  jay  better  'n  a  dead 
eagle!" 

She  looked  at  him  measuringly.  "That's  the  longest 
you've  said  yet,"  she  remarked;  "I  guess  you  don't  care 
much  about  talking,  do  you  ?  Now  you're  laughing,"  she 
added  quickly,  her  own  grave  little  face  breaking  into  dim 
ples.  "  With  your  eyes,  kind  of,  I  mean.  My  name's  Frances 
Blake  —  you  can  call  me  Francie,  if  you  —  if  you'd  like  to. 
I'm  eight.  How  old  are  you  ?  " 

Nat  told  her,  warming,  not  unnaturally,  I  think,  to  the 
first  person,  child  as  she  was,  who  had  displayed  a  living 
interest  in  him.  The  little  thing  climbed  up  on  a  saw-buck, 
and  sat  swinging  her  books  in  their  strap,  swinging  her  bon 
net  by  its  strings,  swinging  her  proper  white  legs,  while  she 
chattered.  "  I  haven't  got  any  father  or  mother,  either,"  she 
said  eagerly,  when  Nat  had  answered  some  of  her  other  ques 
tions;  "they're  dead  —  a  great  long  while  ago  when  I  was  a 


36  NATHAN   BURKE 

little  weenty  teenty  baby;  that's  why  I'm  not  sorry.  Aunt 
Anne  says  I  ought  to  be  sorry,  but  I  just  ain't.  I  just  live 
here,  you  know,  there  isn't  any  other  place  for  me  —  I'm 
Aunt  Anne's  little  girl,  she  says.  I've  got  to  go  to  school  and 
study  hard,  Aunt  Anne  says,  because  I'm  not  very  quick  — 
she  says  I'm  the  slowest  child  she  ever  saw." 

"I  don't  have  to  go  to  school  —  I  get  excused  often  —  often 
and  often.  Ma  got  me  excused  to-day,  because  I'm  sick. 
I've  got  the  awfullest  sore  throat  you  ever  saw,"  said  George, 
hopping  on  one  foot;  "I  ain't  a  bit  rugged,  Ma  says.  I'm 
delicate." 

"I  thought  you  looked  kinder  peaked,"  said  Nathan. 
Frances  gave  him  a  sharp  glance. 

"Now  you're  laughing  again,"  she  said,  nodding  her  head 
shrewdly.  "Oh,  looky  here,  I've  got  your  name  in  one  of 
my  books!  It's  an  old  one  I'm  not  using,  except  to  learn  to 
make  writing-letters  out  of.  Look,  it  says :  '  Can  Nat  pat 
the  cat  ? '  You  said  you  were  Nat,  didn't  you  ?  " 

Nathan  arrested  the  axe  to  stare  at  the  page  she  spread 
before  him,  with  the  first  prick  of  interest  he  had  so  far  ex 
perienced  in  his  life,  in  a  book.  His  unskilled  eyes  and  mind 
followed  the  lines  of  print  without  intelligence  until  they 
encountered  with  a  pleasurable  surprise  his  own  name  in 
clear  letters  such  as  Vaughn's  Vegetable  Lithontriptic  Mix 
ture  itself  could  not  have  bettered. 

"There,  N,  A,  T,  that's  the  big  print  letters,  and  here  it's 
the  little  ones  all  except  the  big  N,  and  down  here  it's  in  the 
writing-lesson  —  that  you  do  on  your  slate,  you  know,  when 
Miss  Thompson  reads  it  off,"  Francie  went  on,  delighted 
with  this  phenomenon.  "I  b'lieve  there's  more  about  you 
in  the  book,  but  a  boy  tore  out  some  of  the  leaves  to  make 
spit-balls  of  —  and  I  upset  ink  over  that  page,  so  it's  not  all 
here.  Didn't  you  have  this  book  at  your  school  ?  I  can  write 
that,  'Can  Nat  pat - 

"Huh!  I  should  think  so,"  said  George,  scornfully;  "you 
ought  to  —  going  on  nine!" 

"I  know  —  I'm  slow  —  and  then  I  didn't  begin  until  last 
fall,"  said  the  child.  She  wrinkled  her  pale  little  forehead 
and  eyebrows  —  which  latter  were  very  thick,  black,  and 
straight  and  lent  what  was  plainly  an  entirely  misleading 
expression  of  resolution  and  temper  to  her  face  —  with  a 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME     37 

passing  look  of  worry;  then  it  cleared.  " But  I  always  learn 
everything  after  a  while,"  she  finished  philosophically,  "so 
it  doesn't  matter.  I'm  through  with  that  book  now.  Would 
you  like  to  have  it?  "  For  Nathan  had  taken  the  shabby 
primer  from  her  hand  and  was  turning  its  stained  and  ragged 
leaves  with  a  sudden  strong  curiosity. 

"Why,  I  —  I  wouldn't  want  —  I  don't  like  — "  he  stam 
mered.  "Are  ye  sure  ye  want  to  give  it  away  ?  You  don't 
know  me  very  well  fer  to  make  me  presents,"  he  warned  her 
with  a  half-laugh.  "They  hed  books  like  this  where  I  went 
ter  school,  but  they  wan't  enough  of  'em  to  go  'round  quite  — 
ye  hed  to  larn  'em,  two  out'n  one  book,  ye  know  —  I  never 
took  much  stock  in  'em  somehow.  But  this  is  a  real  nice 
book.  I  guess  it's  too  good  ter  give  away,  ain't  it  ?  " 

"It  isn't  any  present,"  Francie  said ;  "it's  just  my  old  book, 
—  I  wouldn't  call  that  a  present.     Only  having  your  name  in 
it  that  way,  wouldn't  you  like  it  ?" 

"Well,  I  would  so,  and  thanky  kindly,"  said  Nathan,  with 
warmth,  seeing  his  acceptance  would  please  her.  He  de 
posited  the  book  carefully  on  an  upper  beam  of  the  woodshed. 
"It's  a  kinder  little  book  fer  folks  to  begin  on,  ain't  it  ?  I  kin 
read  it  nights  er  times  when  I  ain't  workin'." 

Friendly  relations  being  thus  established,  Francie  climbed 
back  on  her  saw-buck  —  which  she  had  temporarily  deserted 
to  complete  the  transfer  of  the  speller  —  and  sat  hunched  up 
watching  him,  with  her  feet  knotted  around  one  of  its  legs, 
and  her  chin  propped  on  her  hands. 

"Did  you  like  your  school  much?  I  don't  like  school," 
she  remarked  candidly.  "  What  was  her  name  ?  The  one  that 
taught  you,  I  mean  ?  " 

1  'Twan't  no  her,  'twas  a  him,"  said  Nat,  swinging  the  axe 
rhythmically;  "  leastways  'twas  a  he  and  a  she  off  an'  on, 
you  know  —  sometimes  one,  sometimes  t'other,  fer  three-four 
weeks  at  a  time.  They  don't  hev'  school  stiddy  right  along 
where  I  come  from,  only  jest  when  folks  kin  spare  time  to  go." 

"My!" 

"  I  didn't  always  go,  even  when  school  took  up,  either," 
Nat  said  explanatorily;  "  I  useter  go  out  an'  shoot  V  catch 
fish- 

"  Oh,  my  !    Where  —  where  did  you  go  ?  " 

"Why,  all  over  —  in  th'  woods,  an'  everywheres." 


38  NATHAN    BURKE 

"  Were  there  wild-flowers  there  ?  My,  I  wish  I  lived  in  the 
country!"  said  Francie,  longingly. 

"No,  ye  don't,"  said  Nat,  in  haste,  aghast  at  the  thought 
of  leading  the  young  astray.  "  'Tain't  —  'tain't  a  nice  place 
fer  little  girls  like  you.  And  I  hadn't  orter  been  shootin' 
an'  fishin'  with  old  Jake  neither  —  I'd  orter  been  in  school, 
I  guess,"  he  added  half  to  himself,  a  little  regretfully. 

" There's  the  dinner-bell,"  said  George,  and  started  to 
wards  the  house.  He  had  not  attended  closely  to  the  recent 
proceedings,  his  interest  in  Nathan  as  a  novelty  seeming  to 
be  already  on  the  wane.  And  it  was  with  the  greater  sur 
prise,  therefore,  that  the  latter  saw  him  pause  on  a  sudden, 
face  about,  and  presently  come  sauntering  slowly  back  again, 
fidgeting  a  little,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets. 

"Say,"  he  began  in  a  confidential  undertone,  "you  got 
any  money?" 

Francie  looked  from  one  to  the  other  of  them  anxiously. 

"Me?"  said  Nat,  who  had  exactly  two  dollars  and  forty 
cents;  "yes." 

"Gimme  two  bits,  will  you  ?  I '11  give  it  back  to  you  to 
morrow.  I  know  a  way  I  can  make  an  awful  lot  of  money  — 
if  I  just  had  the  two  bits  to  start  on.  fl  got  to  get  a  few 
things  first,  you  know  —  twine  and  —  and  things.  It's  a 
secret,  or  I'd  tell  you.  I  guess  I'll  make  ten  or  'leven  dol 
lars,  sure.  Mebbe  more." 

"What  do  you  want  of  his  two  bits,  then?  Why  don't 
you  get  Uncle  George—  "  Francie  demanded  practically. 

The  boy  turned  on  her  peevishly.  "You  needn't  worry, 
Miss  Smarty;  I'm  not  saying  anything  to  you.  She  made  a 
quarter  herself  digging  dandelion-greens  out  of  the  front- 
yard.  Father  gave  it  to  her  for  digging  'em;  and  she  never 
gave  me  a  cent  of  it,"  he  said  morosely.  "Meany  —  all 
girls  are  mean,  I  guess.  Ma  says  we  should  always  share 
everything." 

"You  didn't  help  any —  Uncle  William  said  I'd  earned  it 
all  by  myself,"  said  Frances. 

"I'll  pay  you  right  away  to-morrow,"  George  repeated, 
turning  to  Nathan  again;  "you  see,  I  got  to  have  it  to-day, 
on  account  of  the  other  boys  all  being  out  of  school  to-mor- 
ror,  'cause  it's  Saturday  and  I  ain't  going  to  divide  with  'em, 
you  know.  They  all  know  about  this;  but  they  can't  do 


CHILDE  ROLAND  TO  THE  DARK  TOWER  CAME     39 

anything  right  now,  and  I'm  sick,  so  I  don't  have  to  go  to 
school  to-day." 

"How1!!  those  other  fellers  like  that,  though  ?"  asked  Na 
than,  fishing  out  the  money  in  no  little  amusement. 

"Ho!  They  ain't  a  bit  smart,  anyhow.  I'll  fix  it  so 
they'll  never  know  about  me  getting  —  I  mean  going  —  well, 
I  can't  tell  you,  you  know,  'cause  that'd  let  the  secret  out. 
I'll  pay  you  to-morrow — if  I  forget,  just  remind  me,  will 
you  ?  "  He  went  off  whistling  to  the  house,  with  the  quarter 
secured  in  his  pocket;  the  little  girl  also  began  slowly  to 
retreat.  "I  —  I  guess  you  don't  know  about  George,"  she 
remarked  diffidently,  digging  one  toe  into  the  ground  and 
spinning  halfway  around  on  it  and  halfway  back.  "  You 
can  have  my  quarter  if  you  like." 

"Lordy,  I  don't  want  yer  money,"  exclaimed  Nathan. 
"If  you  don't  look  out,  you'll  give  away  everything  you've 
got." 

"It's  not  that,  but  George,  you  know — he  —  he  won't 
ever  pay  you  back  the  two  bits.  He  always  says  to-morrow 
— and  then  he  don't  pay  it  back  at  all.  And  Aunt  Anne  says 
it's  awful  to  owe  the  people  that  work  for  you  anything.  But 
George  don't  —  he  don't  —  I  mean  it's  no  use  to  tell  him,  be 
cause  he's  always  going  to  pay  you  to-morrow  —  and  he  just 
gets  mad,  if  you  say  anything.  I  —  I  wish  you'd  take  my 
quarter."  She  faced  him  with  eyes  full  of  her  childish  trouble, 
and  Nathan  divined  that  the  situation  was  not  unusual. 

"Why  don't  you  tell  your  aunt,  then  —  ?"  he  was  begin 
ning,  when  she  interrupted  him  with  a  surprised  look. 

"George  would  tell  her  it  wasn't  so,"  she  said  simply. 
"And  then  it  wouldn't  make  any  difference  what  I  said,  she'd 
just  say,  'H'm,"  and  wouldn't  hear  me  any  more.  I  wish  you'd 
take  my  quarter,  please.  Nora  cried  about  her  money  — 
but  it  was  more,  it  was  a  dollar  —  she  ain't  going  to  stay 
here  —  Aunt  Anne  says  she  ain't  kind  to  children." 

Nat  sat  down  on  the  saw-buck,  considering  her  thought 
fully;  and  she  came  and  stood  in  front  of  him,  eying  him 
back  with  a  grave  and  open  gaze. 

"You'd  better  take  my  quarter,"  she  repeated,  nodding 
her  wise  head. 

"You've  got  no  call  to  pay  George's  debts,"  said  Nathan; 
"what  do  you  want  to  do  that  f or  ?  " 


40  NATHAN    BURKE 

"Why,  somebody's  got  to  pay  them,  don't  you  see?  It's 
not  right  to  owe  people,  Aunt  Anne  says.  And  he  won't 
pay  —  and  you  went  and  loaned  him  the  money  before  I 
could  stop  you  —  and  I'm  his  cousin  —  somebody's  got  to 
pay  you,  or  you  won't  ever  get  it,"  argued  the  child,  still 
clinging,  spite  of  the  evident  confusion  of  her  mind,  to  some 
rock  of  principle  bedded  in  the  very  nature  of  her;  and  a 
spirit  within  Nat  himself,  equally  native  and  inarticulate, 
understood  and  answered  her. 

"  You  think  George  beat  me  out'n  my  money  'cuz  I  didn't 
know  him,  and  somebody  had  orter  told  me  —  is  that  it  ?" 
he  said.  "Don't  you  worry,  Francie,  I  know  all  about 
George.  I  reckon  he  borrys  your  money,  too,  when  he  gits 
th'  chanst,  hey?" 

She  hesitated,  then  nodded.  "I  just  give  it  to  him,  you 
know,"  she  explained. 

"Might  as  well  give  it  first  as  last,  hey?"  said  Nathan, 
grinning;  "he'll  git  your  two  bits  direckly  if  he  keeps  at  ye 
long  enough  —  an'  he's  a  master-hand  to  keep  at  ye,"  he 
commented;  and  seeing  assent  in  her  face,  went  on:  "Tell  ye 
what :  you  bring  yer  money  here  an'  give  it  to  me,  —  wait  a 
minute,  I  ain't  through  yet,  —  an'  I'll  put  it  in  this  here  little 
tin  box  along  with  th'  flint  an'  steel  an'  th'  piece  of  punk  I 
keep  to  light  th'  lantern  with,  right  up  here  on  th'  shelf  by 
th'  lantern.  Then  next  time  George  wants  to  borry  yer 
money,  ye  kin  jest  send  him  to  me  —  I'll  larn  him  a  few  'bout 
borryin'  from  girls!"  he  wound  up,  not  without  relish. 

"I  wanted  to  pay  you,  though,"  said  the  youngster, 
troubled. 

"  Well,  ye're  trustin'  me  with  yer  money,  ain't  ye  ?  That's 
pretty  nigh  th'  same  thing."  He  persuaded  her  to  this 
agreement  finally,  and  Frances  brought  him  the  coin  in  a 
shiny  little  pasteboard  box  with  a  bit  of  jewellers'  cotton, 
bright  pink,  enfolding  it.  Nathan  has  it  still. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  MAIL-BAG 

Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh  at 

Chenonville,  Avoyelles  Parish,  La.          Sunday  (no  date) 
MY  PRECIOUS  MOTHER, 

Your  letter  came  Thursday.  It  is  still  chilly  and  I  think 
you  had  better  not  come  North  until  the  middle  of  June 
but  of  course  if  you  start  now  and  visit  everybody  on  the 
way  up  you  will  not  get  here  before  the  warm  weather.  I 
do  wish  you  could  bring  Mam  Jinnie  or  one  or  two  of  the 
other  old  darkies  and  that  smart  young  Luella  that  you 
say  is  such  a  good  semptress  with  you  (only  I  generally 
don't  care  for  the  yellow  ones  they  are  too  near  white  and 
inclined  to  put  on  airs)  but  Uncle  George  and  William  both 
say  you  can't  bring  slaves  into  this  State  without  danger  of 
some  kind  of  fuss  so  better  not  try  it.  I  think  it's  the  silliest 
thing  I  ever  heard  of  you  can  bring  everything  else  you  own 
all  the  furniture  and  everything  and  nobody  would  say  a 
word  and  nobody  in  the  South  ever  cares  what  you  take 
there.  And  if  they  are  yours  why  what  business  is  that  of 
anybody  else's  what  you  bring  ?  I  never  would  think  of 
interfering  in  other  peoples'  affairs  but  William  says  women 
don't  understand  and  I  must  not  worry  about  it.  I  just 
said  to  him  Why  William  I  can't  help  worrying  and  I 
should  think  you  would  see  what  a  trouble  I  have  with  ser 
vants.  And  if  we  can't  bring  slaves  from  the  South  why  do 
they  let  Governor  Gywnne  import  a  whole  family  from 
Ireland  and  set  them  down  in  his  kitchen  I'd  like  to  know. 
It's  just  the  same  thing  exactly.  And  Will  just  laughed  and 
said  No  it  isn't  Puss,  and  Governor  Gwynne  paid  his  ser 
vants.  But  of  course  you  know  that's  not  the  real  reason, 
it's  because  they're  white  (the  Irish  I  mean)  and  nobody 
up  here  ever  makes  any  to-do  over  the  white  people  tho' 

41 


42  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  servants  half  the  time  aren't  nearly  as  well  treated  as 
our  colored  ones.  But  they  won't  believe  that  they  think 
we're  standing  around  with  raw-hides  and  blood-hounds 
every  minute  making  the  slaves  behave.  And  they  just 
smile  and  shake  their  heads  (that  is  some  of  them  do)  when 
I  say  that  we're  fond  of  our  negroes  and  nobody  ever  treats 
them  badly  but  the  overseers  and  they're  almost  always 
men  from  the  North.  If  you  brought  Luella  you  know  you 
could  hire  her  out  part  of  the  time  when  you  hadn't  any 
sewing  for  her  to  do  or  didn't  need  her  and  that  way  you 
could  easily  get  back  the  money  it  would  take  to  bring  her. 
The  same  way  you  know  that  Cousin  Elise  Guion  did  with 
her  Polly  and  Ned  after  Cousin  Louis  got  shot  in  Baton 
Rouge  the  time  they  elected  Judge  Lestrappe  and  she  was  a 
widow  and  didn't  have  anything  left  to  live  on.  I  must 
say  I  always  thought  she  did  pretty  well  after  Cousin  Louis 
died  better  than  when  he  was  alive.  Well  anyway  it's  no 
use  talking  you  can't  bring  them. 

The  way  things  are  here  it's  a  perfect  nuisance  (about  ser 
vants  I  mean)  and  I  never  shall  get  used  to  it  if  I  live  in  the 
North  for  centuries.  I  can't  understand  now  why  it  was  that 
none  of  us  ever  noticed  it  when  we  used  to  come  up  here 
with  you  every  summer  and  visit  Uncle  George  before  any 
of  us  were  married.  But  girls  aren't  thinking  of  anything 
but  dress  and  having  a  good  time  and  then  of  course  we 
were  in  the  best  hotels  and  boarding-houses  wherever  we 
went  and  never  heard  a  thing  about  servants.  And  by  the 
way  Uncle  George  has  made  a  change  and  is  boarding  now 
with  a  Mrs.  Woolley  on  Friend  Street.  I  wanted  him  to 
come  here  and  live  with  us  but  he  doesn't  care  about  it  and 
you  know  he's  very  set  so  I  suppose  it's  just  as  well.  I  was 
going  to  tell  you  when  I  got  started  on  this  that  I  got  two 
of  the  girls  out  of  Governor  Gwynne's  Irish  family  there  were 
a  whole  piling  lot  of  them  all  ages  going  down  in  steps  one 
a  little  bit  younger  than  the  next  you  know  which  I  suppose 
is  the  reason  the  governor  brought  them  so  there'd  always 
be  somebody  coming  on  to  take  the  place  as  fast  as  they  got 
married  or  anything.  It's  a  splendid  plan  if  you  can  only  get 
hold  of  a  big  enough  family.  These  two  he  didn't  want  of 
course.  Marian  Gwynne  is  keeping  house  for  him  now  (you 
know  Marian  Ellison  the  one  that  married  David  Gwynne) 


THE   MAIL-BAG  43 

She  came  back  last  fall  from  Philadelphia  after  David  died 
she's  got  one  child  Louise  the  reddest  head  you  ever  saw 
Gwynne  all  over.  So  of  course  Marian  took  her  pick  of  the 
Irish  and  got  the  best  of  them  tho'  dear  knows  that's  not 
saying  much.  My  two  didn't  know  a  living  thing  and  went 
whooping  and  keening  around  in  that  Irish  way  till  I  couldn't 
stand  it  and  they're  both  going  when  this  month  is  up.  They 
want  to  go  around  the  house  in  their  bare  feet  and  break 
the  china  half  a  dozen  plates  at  a  clip  as  Will  says  so  that  I 
have  to  let  them  go  in  sheer  self-defence  or  I  wouldn't  have 
a  thing  left  to  put  on  the  table.  William  seemed  to  think  it 
rather  funny  until  Bridget  scrubbed  his  leather  arm-chair 
with  soft-soap  and  boiling  water  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  why 
for  she  never  scrubs  the  kitchen-floor  and  then  he  sang  a 
very  different  tune.  Of  course  I  want  to  teach  them  our 
ways  about  cooking  I  always  do  that  as  none  of  them  ever 
know  anything  about  corn-bread  or  beat-biscuit  or  gumbo 
but  there  are  some  things  I  supposed  everybody  knew  and 
thought  I  didn't  need  to  tell  them.  But  I  never  saw  people 
so  stupid  they  can't  learn  tho'  I've  tried  my  best  for  weeks 
and  put  up  with  all  kinds  of  impertinence  from  them  and  I 
just  had  to  tell  them  I  couldn't  do  anything  with  them  they 
were  too  dull  and  I'd  give  up  and  let  somebody  else  try. 
Neither  one  of  them  seemed  a  bit  sorry  although  they  are 
leaving  a  good  home  and  I  think  we  are  giving  the  highest 
wages  of  anybody  in  town  a  dollar  seventy-five  to  the  cook 
and  a  dollar  and  a  half  to  Nora.  I  asked  Nathan  if  he 
didn't  know  a  nice  country-girl  that  wanted  a  place  in  town 
and  if  he  wouldn't  tell  her  about  us  and  what  a  good  place 
this  was.  But  he  said  he  didn't  know  of  any  one.  He's 
another  slow  one  the  slowest  mortal  on  earth  I  do  believe 
not  about  his  work  you  know  but  other  things.  But  he  seems 
to  be  improving  here  lately. 

I  forget  whether  I  told  you  that  Nathan  is  our  new  chore- 
boy.  William  was  perfectly  possessed  to  get  one  from  the 
country  he  says  they're  always  the  best  and  he  heard  about 
this  one  from  a  farmer  that  comes  in  to  do  his  trading  at  the 
store.  Wo\l  he  was  the  wildest-looking  scarecrow  you  can 
possibly  imagine  I  tell  you  my  heart  went  down  into  my 
boots  when  I  saw  him  but  as  I  say  he's  getting  along  very 
well  in  spite  of  his  looks  and  you  never  have  to  tell  him  a 


44  NATHAN   BURKE 

thing  but  once  which  is  a  comfort.  I  thought  at  first  it  would 
be  as  well  to  watch  him  and  see  that  he  didn't  take  things 
or  neglect  or  mistreat  anything  for  I  never  saw  one  of  them 
that  wouldn't  bear  watching.  And  you  know  our  harness 
is  very  handsome  with  silver-plated  buckles  on  it.  So  I 
have  been  going  out  every  now  and  then  when  he  wasn't 
expecting  anybody  and  kind  of  wandering  round  keeping  one 
eye  out  and  asking  about  things  in  a  way  that  showed  I 
knew.  But  I  never  caught  him  doing  anything  out  of  the  way 
and  nothing's  been  missed  so  far.  Probably  he  don't  know 
enough  to  know  when  things  are  valuable.  He  seems  to 
work  right  straight  ahead  without  paying  any  attention  to 
anybody  even  me  and  William  says  the  work  is  done  all 
right  but  a  man  never  knows.  Nathan  is  rather  silent  and 
sulky  and  never  speaks  except  when  he  is  spoken  to  so  differ 
ent  from  our  colored  people  who  always  have  such  beautiful 
manners.  I  told  William  thinking  he'd  be  pleased  for  he 
never  has  any  time  to  look  after  anything  or  see  that  the 
servants  are  doing  their  work  and  I  want  to  spare  him  that 
extra  trouble  as  much  as  I  can.  But  he  was  quite  put  out 
and  said  I  ought  to  remember  that  Nathan  was  a  self-re 
specting  white  man  and  that  he  wouldn't  go  picking  and 
stealing  and  idling  away  his  time  like  the  darkies  and  he 
thought  it  very  strange  that  after  living  in  the  North  five 
years  I  couldn't  see  that  white  people  of  the  working  class 
were  different  from  slaves  and  that  he  thought  maybe  that 
was  one  reason  why  I  had  such  a  time  getting  along  with 
them.  I  never  knew  Will  so  unreasonable  and  I'm  afraid 
maybe  he's  not  very  well  or  has  been  having  trouble  at  the 
store  and  you  know  he's  too  sweet  and  dear  ever  to  tell  me 
anything  about  his  business  for  fear  of  worrying  me  tho'  I 
should  really  like  to  know  and  I'm  sure  I  could  help 
him. 

I  didn't  argue  with  him  at  all  I  just  said  Why  William 
you  know  the  negroes  don't  call  it  stealing  to  take  things  to 
eat  once  in  a  while  or  pretty  things  to  wear  you  just  have 
to  watch  them  a  little  and  when  they  take  things  just  take 
them  away  and  tell  them  they  can't  have  that  and  they 
won't  make  a  bit  of  fuss.  It  wouldn't  be  at  all  odd  if  Nathan 
should  take  something  and  I  wouldn't  have  any  squabble 
with  him  I'd  just  tell  him  nicely  and  quietly  that  that  wasn't 


THE   MAIL-BAG  45 

right  and  the  experience  would  be  good  for  him.  They  all 
have  to  be  taught  things  like  that.  I've  hardly  ever  had  a 
servant  I  didn't  have  to  teach  that  way,  and  I'm  sure  IVe 
had  a  good  many.  But  while  I  was  talking  Will  just  got  up 
and  said  he  had  to  go  to  the  store  and  went  off  without  an 
other  word  so  I  know  he's  worried  about  something  and  it 
makes  me  very  anxious  and  miserable. 

This  long  letter  is  all  about  nothing  but  servants  but  you 
know,  mother  darling  I  never  could  compose  I  just  have  to 
write  right  along  what  comes  into  my  head  and  after  all  I 
generally  manage  to  get  everything  in  that's  news.  George 
is  doing  wonderfully  at  school  especially  when  you  consider 
he  has  to  be  out  of  it  a  great  deal  of  the  time  when  he  isn't 
well.  Of  course  he's  my  child  and  I  don't  want  to  be  silly 
about  him  like  so  many  mothers  but  it's  a  great  pleasure  to 
me  to  have  him  so  handsome  and  smart.  I  wish  I  could 
say  as  much  for  Francie  but  there  is  no  use  pretending  the 
child  is  altogether  her  father  over  again  and  not  in  the  least 
like  dear  Sister  who  was  always  so  gentle  and  refined.  Here 
latterly  she's  struck  up  a  great  friendship  with  the  hired 
man  and  wants  to  go  and  stand  around  and  watch  him  and 
talk  to  him  at  his  work.  She  must  get  more  out  of  him  than 
the  rest  of  us  for  we  never  hear  him  say  anything  but  yes 
ma'am  and  no  ma'am.  But  Francie  certainly  has  a  bent  for 
that  sort  of  society  and  it  almost  reconciles  me  to  Sister's 
death  when  I  think  how  it  would  have  grieved  her. 

I  will  write  you  again  at  Cousin  Tom's  and  you  must  write 
me  every  place  you  stop  and  how  long  you  think  you  will  be 
there  so  that  I  will  know  where  to  send  my  letters.  With  a 
heartful  of  love  for  my  own  dearest  mother  as  ever  your 

NANCY. 

P.S.  William  has  just  brought  me  the  most  beautiful 
brooch  a  heart-shaped  opal  with  diamonds  all  around  it.  I 
know  he  feels  badly  for  having  spoken  to  me  so  harshly  about 
the  hired  man  —  as  if  that  mattered.  Oh  mother  dear  I 
just  can't  wait  till  you  get  here  I  am  so  crazy  for  you  to  see 
it.  Lovingly  A. 


46  NATHAN   BURKE 


Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh 

care  Judge  Thomas  B.  Henry 

Memphis  Tenn.,  June  17th,  183- 

MY  DEAREST  MOTHER. 

Well  it  is  sizzling  hot  here  now  so  you  wouldn't  be  much 
better  off  than  where  you  are  still  I  was  very  much  dissap- 
pointed  (sic)  when  your  letter  came  saying  you  couldn't  get 
here  at  the  time  we  set.  But  of  course  if  all  Helen's  children 
are  down  with  the  measles  you  can't  leave  her  it  would  be 
perfectly  heartless  when  she  depends  on  you  so.  Measles 
aren't  dangerous  but  to  have  three  or  four  of  the  poor  little 
things  (and  hers  are  so  near  together  barely  a  year  between 
them)  all  crying  and  miserable  at  once  is  pretty  hard  to 
stand  without  some  other  help  than  the  colored  servants. 
Grace  and  her  two  boys  are  here  now  and  Tulie  Vanneaudet ; 
they  all  send  their  love  to  you. 

What  you  said  about  meeting  the  only  man  that  escaped 
from  the  Alamo  on  the  boat  coming  up  from  New  Orleans 
was  most  interesting  but  oh  mother  I'm  afraid  you've  been 
terribly  taken  in.  Do  let  me  tell  you  what  happened  here 
the  other  day.  I  was  -sitting  upstairs  sewing  on  Francie's 
little  dress  for  the  pic-nic  Mrs.  Hunter  is  going  to  give  her 
Jennie  and  the  children  on  the  twenty-fifth  when  school 
closes  when  Georgie  came  bursting  into  the  room  with  his 
eyes  as  big  as  saucers  screaming  out  Oh  Ma  there's  a  soldier 
in  the  kitchen  do  come  and  look  at  him,  he's  the  last  one  that 
got  out!  He  was  so  excited  I  couldn't  make  out  what  he 
was  talking  about  so  I  thought  I  might  as  well  go  down  and 
see  the  last  one  that  got  out  whoever  and  whatever  he  was 
and  wherever  he  got  out  of.  When  I  got  to  the  kitchen 
here  was  Mary  (she's  the  new  one)  setting  a  great  table-full 
of  cold  beef  and  pie  and  pickles  and  everything  in  the  pantry 
for  the  man  who  looked  awfully  weak  and  tired  poor  fellow 
and  no  wonder  for  he  told  me  he  had  walked  every  foot  of  the 
way  from  Texas  here  and  he  was  going  up  to  his  old  mother 
who  lived  in  New  York  State  and  he  expected  to  die  there 
if  not  before  he'd  had  such  a  terrible  time.  And  he  wasn't 
the  last  one  as  my  little  boy  said  but  the  only  one  that  got 
out  of  the  Alamo  alive.  It  was  the  most  pitiful  thing  I 


THE  MAIL-BAG  47 

ever  saw  he  was  almost  starved  altho'  before  he  would  eat 
a  bite  he  asked  couldn't  he  have  a  little  stimulant  as  he  felt 
very  faint  and  it  was  dangerous  for  a  starving  man  to  eat 
a  meal  unless  he  had  something  like  that  beforehand.  So 
Mary  was  going  to  give  him  some  cider  but  I  said  Mary 
how  can  you!  And  I  made  her  get  him  a  bottle  out  of  that 
case  of  French  brandy  Uncle  George  gave  William  last 
Christmas  and  you  may  know  how  badly  he  felt  by  this 
taking  at  least  two-thirds  of  it  before  he  felt  strong  enough  to 
begin  and  eat.  He  was  so  grateful  and  said  Madam  you 
know  what's  good  for  a  starving  man  and  drank  off  a  whole 
tumbler  with  a  little  water  at  one  swallow.  You  see  he  was 
very  different  from  the  man  you  met  except  that  he  hadn't 
any  money  either.  He  was  all  in  rags  and  I  got  him  some 
clothes  and  a  good  shirt  of  William's  and  it  was  perfectly 
touching  to  hear  him  say  Madame  I'm  nothing  but  a  poor 
defender  of  my  country  I  can't  give  you  anything  in  return 
for  your  kindness  but  God  bless  you.  He  was  so  overcome 
he  could  hardly  speak  distinctly.  Just  then  Nathan  the 
hired  man  came  in,  and  he  looked  kind  of  queerly  at  the  man 
but  didn't  say  anything  in  his  usual  sulky  way  I  suppose 
he  was  mad  because  he  saw  I  had  given  the  man  some  of 
Mr.  Ducey's  clothes  which  he  considers  his  perquisite. 

So  then  we  got  the  man  to  tell  us  all  about  the  fight  at  the 
Alamo  and  it  wasn't  at  all  as  your  man  described  it  so  you 
see  you've  been  deceived  and  I'm  so  sorry  you  gave  him  any 
money.  In  the  first  place  you  know  your  man  said  Colonel 
Crockett  drew  a  line  and  said  for  everybody  to  step  over 
that  wanted  to  go  away  and  everybody  but  himself  (your 
man  I  mean)  stayed  and  he  waited  until  the  Mexicans 
stopped  firing  for  a  minute  and  dropped  over  the  wall  and 
swam  the  river  and  got  away.  But  this  man  said  it  wasn't 
like  that  at  all  and  the  Mexicans  never  stopped  firing  for  a 
second  and  Crockett  never  said  that.  He  said  it  was  the 
most  aweful  scene  sometimes  he  thought  he  was  going  to 
lose  his  mind  when  he  remembered  it.  Or  dreamed  about 
it.  He  killed  six  men  himself  and  the  last  one  with  his 
dying  effort  hit  him  over  the  head  with  his  rifle  so  he  fell 
down  insensible  under  the  heap  of  the  six  he  had  killed  and 
that  way  was  hidden  when  the  Mexicans  came  around  killing 
the  wounded  afterwards.  I  said  Mercy  six  men  and  he 


48  NATHAN   BURKE 

said  that  wasn't  anything  Crockett  killed  fourteen  he  saw 
him  and  counted  them  as  they  fell  and  Col.  Bowie  shot 
eight  and  knifed  five  before  they  killed  him.  He  said  the 
Mexicans  came  swarming  in  by  hundreds  and  our  men  were 
overwhelmed  but  kept  on  fighting  like  devils  one  man  against 
a  dozen  at  once  so  that  they  hardly  knew  what  they  were 
doing  just  shot  and  stabbed  blindly  right  and  left.  Then 
Nathan  drawled  out  My  I  don't  see  how  you  could  take  time 
to  count  them  men  you  and  the  others  killed.  But  of  course 
he  did  that  afterwards  and  he  said  he  heard  the  Mexicans 
talking  about  it  while  he  was  lying  on  the  ground.  You  see 
his  story  is  almost  exactly  the  same  as  they  had  in  the  news 
papers  so  it  must  be  true.  He  said  it  had  taken  him  ever 
since  over  a  year  to  get  away  from  Texas  and  get  this  far 
North  and  he  didn't  know  whether  he'd  live  to  see  his 
mother  after  all  and  he  was  her  only  boy.  And  oh  mother 
he  cried  when  he  said  that  and  it  was  the  saddest  thing.  I 
just  thought  of  my  little  Georgie.  I  gave  him  two  dollars 
so  he  could  go  part  of  the  way  on  the  stage  or  by  the  canal 
for  I  saw  he  must  be  very  feeble  from  all  he  had  gone  through. 
And  after  I  had  come  upstairs  I  heard  a  kind  of  rumpus 
in  the  kitchen  and  I  looked  out  of  the  window  and  there 
was  Nathan  sort  of  boosting  the  man  along  to  the  side  gate 
in  a  very  rough  way  so  I  called  out  of  the  window  to  him  and 
told  him  to  be  more  gentle  that  poor  man  wasn't  able  to 
walk  but  he  didn't  answer  just  shoved  him  out  of  the  yard 
and  kept  shoving  him  up  the  street  altho'  I  could  see  the 
man  was  protesting.  William  brought  Uncle  George  home 
to  dinner  and  I  told  them  about  it  and  said  plainly  I 
didn't  believe  I  wanted  such  a  bad-tempered  boy  as  Nathan 
around  because  it  was  such  a  bad  example  for  Georgie  and 
I  was  sure  if  he  behaved  like  this  at  only  sixteen  or  seven 
teen  he  would  turn  out  a  brutal  vicious  man.  I  thought 
they  both  looked  rather  funny  and  Will  seemed  a  little  taken 
aback  about  the  brandy  especially  when  he  found  there 
wasn't  any  left  and  said  he  thought  cider  would  have  done 
for  the  fellow,  but  I  said  Why  William  and  then  he  kissed 
me  and  said  I  was  a  dear  little  woman  and  never  mind  he 
didn't  care  how  much  brandy  I  gave  away.  Then  Uncle 
George  said  in  his  swearing  way  By  —  he'd  like  to  see  that 
chore-boy.  And  they  both  went  out  and  talked  to  him  and 


THE   MAIL-BAG  49 

came  back  laughing  and  Will  told  me  he  wouldn't  dismiss 
him  because  he  had  really  been  doing  what  he  thought  was 
right  and  Uncle  George  seemed  to  think  he  was  a  pretty 
likely  boy.  William  always  is  so  attentive  to  Uncle  George's 
likes  and  dislikes  you  know  he  thinks  its  his  duty. 

I  have  written  this  off  in  a  great  hurry  to  catch  the  mail 
as  I  want  to  be  sure  you  will  get  it.  Dearest  love  to  all 
and  keep  the  lion's  share  for  yourself  from 

your  own  NANCY. 

P.S.  Will  says  the  last  six  months  the  country  has  been 
fairly  bristling  with  only  survivors  of  the  Alamo  and  they 
come  into  the  store  begging  every  two  or  three  weeks.  He 
says  there're  enough  of  them  to  have  crammed  the  fort  full 
and  some  left  outside.  Isn't  it  awful  to  think  there  are  so 
many  impostors  ?  Your  man  must  have  been  one  of  them. 

NAN. 

Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  Stevenson  Desha,  at 

Frankfort,  Ky.  July  (no  other  date) 

MY  DEAR  SISTER  BETTY, 

Ma  will  be  with  you  by  the  time  this  reaches  Frankfort 
unless  something  has  turned  up  to  keep  her  at  Emily's  so 
this  letter  is  for  both  of  you.  I  have  been  expecting  her 
from  week  to  week  and  so  have  you  I  suppose  but  she  is 
always  a  long  while  on  the  road  for  of  course  she  can't  go 
right  by  where  people  live  and  one's  kin  at  that  and  never 
stop  to  see  them  you  understand  that  as  well  as  I  do.  Only 
it's  a  little  awkward  to  have  all  our  friends  calling  to  see  her 
for  two  months  before  she  gets  here  and  by  the  time  she  does 
get  here  they  will  all  be  completely  played  out  and  won't 
want  to  come  again. 

I  wish  you  could  come  with  her  this  time  but  of  course 
if  you're  expecting  in  September  it  wouldn't  be  quite  safe 
and  besides  you  would  be  uncomfortable.  I  do  hope  it  will 
be  a  boy  this  time.  But  you  would  be  so  interested  to  see 
this  place  again  and  meet  everybody  you  used  to  know.  It 
has  changed  so  much  in  ten  years  and  got  so  much  bigger 
you  would  be  perfectly  astonished.  Every  one  keeps  talking 
about  hard  times  and  this  currency  trouble  but  it  seems  to 


50  NATHAN   BURKE 

me  things  go  right  along  just  the  same  and  they  go  on  build 
ing  houses  and  have  lovely  things  in  the  stores.  And  I 
must  say  I  can't  see  why  people  should  make  such  a  fuss 
over  whether  they  buy  things  with  a  piece  of  silver  marked 
ten  cents  or  a  piece  of  paper  marked  ten  cents.  They  call 
them  shin-plasters  here  I  suppose  they  do  with  you  too.  Of 
course  the  paper  ones  aren't  any  good  sometimes  but  generally 
you  can  get  your  ten  cents  worth  with  either  one  so  what's 
the  difference  ?  And  oh  Betty  I  do  think  it's  the  funniest 
thing  the  way  they  all  talk  about  General  Jackson  and  the 
President  (the  Whigs  talk  I  mean)  and  say  it's  all  their 
fault  about  the  shin-plasters  and  the  banks  breaking  up  you 
know  and  go  on  as  if  both  the  poor  men  had  horns  hoofs  and 
tails  and  then  lo  and  behold  at  the  4th  of  July  banquet  the 
other  day  didn't  they  get  up  and  toast  Jackson  and  Van  Buren 
and  talk  about  them  as  if  they  were  the  grandest  things  on 
earth!  Every  other  day  in  the  year  they  say  the  United 
States  is  going  to  the  dogs  and  on  the  4th  it's  the  most  pros 
perous  wonderful  country  there  is.  Will  says  it's  because 
they're  all  politicians  and  they  have  to  do  that  way  on  a 
public  occasion  because  it  wouldn't  be  proper  and  dignified 
to  say  what  they  think.  I  tell  you  if  the  women  ran  it  things 
would  be  different. 

They  had  the  banquet  it  was  really  just  a  basket-party 
you  know  like  the  burgoos  at  home  out  in  Willson's  Grove: 
I  expect  you  remember  the  place  because  we  went  to  a  pic-nic 
there  one  summer  when  we  were  all  up  here  visiting  Uncle 
George  only  you  were  a  right  little  girl  at  the  time.  It's 
generally  kind  of  hot  and  flies  in  the  lemonade  and  I  don't 
care  much  about  going  but  of  course  the  children  were 
crazy  to.  In  the  morning  they  had  the  procession  as  usual 
and  we  all  saw  it  from  the  windows  in  the  big  room  over 
William's  store  and  then  we  went  to  the  Methodist  Church 
where  the  procession  wound  up'  not  that  they  were  all 
Methodists  you  know  but  its  the  biggest  in  town  so  every 
body  could  get  in  and  hear  the  exercises.  The  place  was 
jammed  to  the  doors  and  hotter  Uncle  George  said  than  it 
was  decent  for  any  church  to  be.  We  had  a  struggle  getting 
in  tho'  we  were  among  the  first  and  at  last  I  got  a  seat  and 
took  Francie  on  my  lap  which  didn't  make  either  of  us  any 
cooler  and  Will  had  to  stand  and  prop  up  Georgie  who  had 


THE   MAIL-BAG  51 

got  himself  somehow  straddle  of  the  pew-door.  It  was  all 
decorated  with  flags  and  streamers  and  they  had  seats  on 
the  platform  for  the  speakers  and  there  they  were  and  I 
did  feel  so  sorry  for  them  they  looked  so  hot  and  uncom 
fortable  and  couldn't  lounge  or  let  down  one  single  instant 
because  everybody  was  looking  square  at  them.  Governor 
Vance  sat  in  the  middle  and  looked  as  if  he  was  simply  melt 
ing  down  (he's  rather  a  stout  man  you  know)  and  finally 
did  unbutton  his  waistcoat  I  suppose  he  couldn't  stand  it 
any  longer  and  no  wonder  it  was  stamped  crimson  velvet 
one  of  those  double-breasted  ones  with  two  rows  of  cut 
crystal  buttons  you  know  very  handsome  and  fashionable 
but  so  out  of  place  particularly  for  a  fleshy  person.  Then 
there  was  Bishop  Mcllvaine  and  he  is  a  dear  and  Mr.  Cor- 
win  and  next  to  him  Governor  or  I  suppose  I  ought  to  say 
ex-governor  Gwynne  only  it's  so  hard  to  remember  and  he 
was  the  only  cool-looking  one  of  them  all.  He's  so  lean 
you  remember  and  immaculately  dressed  his  shirt  didn't 
wilt  down  one  bit  like  every  one  else's  but  he  seemed  pretty 
cross  for  all  that.  I  guess  he  can't  help  it  I  never  saw  him 
look  pleasant.  He's  just  like  a  scrawny  old  turkey-gobbler 
with  that  great  hook  nose  and  his  hair  has  got  awfully  gray 
this  last  year  I  don't  think  you'd  know  him  he  seems  so 
much  older. 

Well  then  Mr.  Sharpless  the  Presbyterian  minister  got 
up  and  prayed  and  prayed  and  prayed  until  we  were  all 
nearly  dead  I  suppose  it's  an  aweful  thing  to  say.  But  all 
the  while  he  was  praying  I  couldn't  help  thinking  of  what  a 
time  he  had  at  home  with  Jimmie  you'd  think  praying 
didn't  do  him  much  good  anyhow.  I'm  sure  you  must 
recollect  Jimmie  he  was  such  a  darling  little  boy  and  you 
used  to  go  and  see  Mary  Sharpless  and  both  of  you  girls  have 
such  a  time  dressing  him  up  and  playing  with  him.  Mary's 
an  old  maid  you  know  it's  so  strange  she's  had  innumerable 
affairs  but  nothing  ever  seems  to  come  to  anything  and  I 
suppose  she  won't  have  any  more  chances  now  she's  twenty- 
five  at  least  she's  a  little  bit  older  than  you.  And  Jimmie  has 
grown  up  a  regular  minister's  son  so  wild  they  can't  do  any 
thing  with  him.  It  must  be  a  terrible  cross  to  his  poor  father 
and  mother  and  I  believe  Will  and  I  hardly  know  how 
blessed  we  are  to  have  a  son  like  Georgie.  They  say  Jim 


52  NATHAN   BURKE 

dropped  a  handful  of  fish-worms  down  some  other  boy's  back 
at  Sunday-school  and  when  the  Methodists  were  having 
their  Conference  here  and  the  whole  town  was  full  of  them  he 
got  out  in  the  yard  and  got  some  of  the  children  in  the  neigh 
borhood  and  the  servants  and  delivered  a  long  sermon  with 
things  like  powerfully  converted  and  awful  conviction  of  SIN 
in  a  great  roaring  rumbling  voice  exactly  to  mimic  the  Rev 
erend  Bigelow  (a  great  pillar  among  the  Methodists)  so  that 
they  were  all  in  fits  of  laughter  and  everybody  else  perfectly 
scandalized.  The  worst  of  it  is  he's  about  fifteen  or  sixteen 
now  too  old  to  whip  him  with  a  cane  and  shut  him  up  in  the 
wood-shed  the  way  his  father  used  to  do.  Uncle  George 
told  Mr.  Sharpless  to  his  face  that  anyway  he  wouldn't  give 
a  -  -  for  a  boy  that  could  be  scared  into  good  behavior 
with  hell-fire  or  a  strap  either  one.  And  poor  Mr.  Sharpless 
couldn't  say  a  word  for  he'd  come  to  ask  for  a  donation ! 

Well  I  must  get  back  to  the  4th  of  July  I  knew  you'd  want 
to  hear  about  Jimmie  so  I  might  as  well  tell  you  while  I  was 
thinking  about  it.  After  Mr.  Sharpless  got  through  we  had 
the  Star-Spangled  Banner  everybody  standing  up  and 
singing  and  then  they  read  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
while  we  were  still  all  standing  of  course.  And  by  the  way 
let  me  tell  you  while  I'm  talking  about  the  Sharpless  boy  that 
as  we  were  standing  and  I  was  a  good  deal  bothered  about 
Francie  the  child  is  so  small  yet  I  couldn't  hold  her  up  and 
I  was  really  afraid  she'd  be  smothered  to  death  down  there 
among  all  our  skirts  with  a  great  fat  woman  squeezed  up 
against  me  on  the  other  side  somebody  leaned  over  from 
behind  and  whispered  to  me  I'll  take  your  little  girl  Mrs. 
Ducey  and  stuck  out  a  great  long  arm  and  sort  of  scooped 
Francie  up  and  stood  her  on  the  back  of  the  pew.  After 
wards  when  the  reading  was  over  I  turned  around  to  thank 
him  and  here  it  was  Jim  Sharpless  and  I  suppose  everybody 
in  the  place  saw  me  speak  to  him  and  I  was  a  good  deal 
embarrassed.  He  is  about  as  big  for  his  age  as  Francie  is 
little  for  hers  with  huge  raw  bony  wrists  sticking  out  of  his 
sleeves  but  not  so  very  bad-looking  a  boy  for  all  his  wild- 
ness.  Of  course  I  made  Francie  come  to  me  right  away  but 
I  spoke  nicely  to  him  and  thanked  him  as  if  I  had  never 
heard  that  there  was  anything  wrong  with  him  at  all.  The 
next  thing  Governor  Vance  spoke  on  the  day  we  celebrate 


THE  MAIL-BAG  53 

but  he  didn't  say  very  much  because  I  suppose  he  knew  the 
others  were  going  to  speak  right  after  him  and  they  must 
have  kind  of  divided  up  what  there  was  to  say  so  it  would 
go  around  and  nobody  interfere  with  anybody  else.  And 
when  he  got  through  Governor  Gwynne  had  his  turn  and 
spoke  about  the  Soldiers  of  the  Revolution  and  was  quite  in 
teresting  much  more  so  than  I  thought  he  could  be  but 
Uncle  George  says  he  has  always  been  a  fine  speaker  and  if 
you  should  come  in  in  the  middle  of  a  speech  Sam  Gwynne 
was  making  you  couldn't  tell  which  side  he  was  on  and  Uncle 
George  says  it  takes  a  smart  man  to  do  that.  And  then  Mr. 
Corwin  spoke  about  the  pioneers  and  first  settlers  and  he  just 
told  funny  stories  and  some  that  weren't  very  nice  but  the 
men  all  laughed  like  everything  even  the  Bishop  sort  of 
grinned.  Then  we  sang  America  and  Bishop  Mcllvaine 
made  a  prayer  that  is  he  just  said  the  General  Thanksgiving 
out  of  the  Service  you  know  Almighty  God  Father  of  all 
mercies  and  said  the  Benediction  and  that  ended  it. 

This  was  the  first  4th  of  July  I  have  been  to  in  four  or  five 
years  what  with  sickness  and  being  in  mourning  for  some  of 
Mr.  Ducey's  family  or  something  preventing.  And  speak 
ing  of  mourning  there  weren't  very  many  of  Governor 
Gwynne's  connection  there  only  some  of  the  men  as  a  good 
many  of  them  are  wearing  black  for  poor  David.  You  know 
the  Gwynnes  are  a  great  family  to  stand  by  one  another  and 
stick  together.  David  was  Charlotte's  elder  brother  that 
you  used  to  be  such  a  friend  of  you  must  have  seen  him 
around  the  house  when  you  used  to  go  there.  However  in 
the  evening  we  all  went  out  to  the  Governor's  to  see  the  fire 
works  on  the  lawn  that  he  has  every  Fourth  for  poor  people. 
The  family  always  ask  a  few  of  their  friends  to  come  and  sit 
on  the  porch  not  to  mix  in  with  the  poor  people  you  know 
but  just  to  see  the  fireworks.  The  Governor  always  goes 
down  and  walks  around  and  talks  to  the  poor  people  and  the 
children  and  Uncle  George  says  it's  nothing  but  one  of  Sam 
Gwynne's  popularity  dodges.  So  we  went  and  the  place 
was  all  lit  up  and  looked  splendid  you  know  it's  his  beautiful 
new  house  with  everything  in  it  very  elegant  but  we  had  a 
doleful  time  in  spite  of  it.  For  here  was  poor  Mrs.  David 
Gwynne  going  around  in  her  black  clothes  all  over  crape 
trying  to  seem  cheerful  and  I  just  said  to  her  in  the  hall 


54  NATHAN   BURKE 

Oh  Marian  my  dear  I  know  this  is  terribly  hard  for  you  and 
why  do  you  do  it  ?  Her  eyes  filled  up  but  she  just  said  I 
can't  help  it  Nannie  you  know  it's  on  account  of  Uncle 
Samuel's  position  we've  got  to  entertain  and  see  people  but 
it's  awful  when  I  think  of  last  year.  She  told  me  all  about 
David's  dying  of  the  cholera  it  was  very  bad  in  Philadelphia 
and  she  thought  Louise  might  go  too  and  she  was  nearly 
distracted  so  she  just  bundled  up  and  came  home  out  West 
tho'  she  didn't  know  what  she  was  going  to  do  or  where  she 
was  going  to  live  after  she  got  here.  And  she  said  the  Gov 
ernor  came  right  to  her  as  soon  as  he  heard  where  she  was 
and  told  her  to  come  here  and  consider  his  house  her  home 
that  his  nephew's  wife  was  just  the  same  to  him  as  his  own 
kin  he  would  think  himself  more  than  repaid  if  she  would 
look  after  his  own  motherless  children.  So  of  course  she 
feels  it  a  duty  to  have  everything  just  the  way  he  likes  and  do 
everything  he  says  but  I  imagine  it's  not  always  very  easy  with 
that  great  house  to  take  care  of  and  all  the  Governor's  chil 
dren  and  they  say  the  boys  are  very  hard  to  manage.  I  told 
her  I  knew  just  how  she  felt  because  that  was  just  the  kind 
of  scare  I  got  into  when  Sister  Cornelia  and  her  husband  died 
within  a  week  of  each  other  of  yellow  fever  in  New  Orleans 
and  I  just  made  William  take  us  all  away  and  bring  us  up 
North  to  Uncle  George  I  was  too  frightened  to  stay  there  a 
minute  longer  I  believe  I'd  have  lost  my  mind.  She  said 
Oh  is  that  Cornelia'  s  little  girl  I  thought  she  was  yours  and 
who  did  Cornelia  marry  ?  So  Betty  I  told  her  she  married 
a  Mr.  Francis  Blake  and  that  was  all.  I  didn't  have  the 
courage  to  tell  Marian  Gwynne  of  all  people  that  he  was 
nothing  but  a  play-actor  I  just  couldn't  do  it  and  besides  I 
don't  know  whether  it  would  be  quite  fair  to  Francie  to  let 
that  get  out  and  I  do  hope  you  have  never  mentioned  it  to 
a  soul  for  you  know  things  like  that  do  travel  around  in  the 
most  wonderful  way.  I  went  right  on  talking  quite  quickly 
and  telling  her  William  had  gone  in  business  up  here  and  we 
meant  to  live  here  always  but  she  didn't  seem  very  much 
interested  poor  thing. 

You  can  see  we  had  quite  an  exhausting  day  of  it  on  the 
4th.  In  the  afternoon  we  went  to  Willson's  Grove  and 
heard  all  the  toasts  after  the  banquet.  It  was  just  the  way 
they  all  are.  They  toasted  the  Press  may  it  forever  stick 


THE   MAIL-BAG  55 

up  as  a  beacon  or  something  like  that  you  know  and  then 
everybody  would  cheer  and  go  on  like  mad.  And  then  the 
Common  Schools  may  they  ever  encourage  the  youth  of  our 
land  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  And  Female  Patriotism  may  it 
something  or  other.  And  Henry  Clay  and  Benjamin  Frank 
lin  (his  memory  of  course)  and  the  Fair  Daughters  of  the 
West  may  they  so-and-so.  And  they  had  one  about  Intem 
perance  Slavery  Licentiousness  may  they  never  do  this  that 
or  the  other.  You  know  people  up  here  are  perfectly  silly 
about  slavery  they  talk  as  if  it  were  the  unpardonable  sin. 
The  children  were  worn  out  when  we  got  home  and  so  cross 
there  was  no  living  in  the  house  with  them  I  never  was  so 
glad  a  day  was  over  in  my  life. 

I  have  written  a  volume  but  I  knew  you  would  be  interested 
to  hear  all  about  everybody  and  what  we  are  doing.  Give 
ever  and  ever  so  much  love  to  Ma  and  everybody  with  a  good 
kiss  and  hug  for  my  dear  little  sister  as  ever 

NANCY. 
Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh  at 
The  Broadway  Hotel  Cincinnati  Ohio 

Thursday  August  2nd. 

MY  DEAR  MOTHER 

I  am  scribbling  this  off  in  a  hurry  yours  having  just  come 
as  I  want  it  to  get  to  you  before  you  make  the  arrangement 
you  speak  of  and  the  West-bound  mail  leaves  at  a  quarter  past 
three.  It's  ever  so  much  better  to  come  as  far  as  you  can  by 
the  canal.  That  would  be  as  far  as  Dayton  anyhow  and 
would  save  you  that  much  of  the  trip  on  the  stage  which  is 
horrid  so  hot  and  dusty  and  dirty  and  the  worst  roads  worse 
I  think  towards  the  Cincinnati  end  than  this  way  tho'  neither 
anything  to  boast  of.  They  have  a  service  with  very  nice 
accommodations  for  passengers  of  course  not  like  an  elegant 
Mississippi  river  steamboat  but  very  nice  altho'  so  slow.  You 
would  be  so  much  cleaner  and  cooler  and  more  comfortable 
than  the  stage  that  I  know  you  would  not  regret  it.  They 
say  the  table  is  very  good  I  don't  know  as  I've  never  been  on 
one  myself.  If  you  come  all  the  way  by  the  stage  you  have 
to  change  at  Dayton  sometime  in  the  middle  of  the  night 
because  the  Douglas  line  of  coaches  ends  and  it's  FinnelFs 
from  there  here. 


56  NATHAN    BURKE 

I  am  sending  this  by  the  Express-Mail  so  it  will  surely  reach 
you.  They  just  began  running  it  last  month  the  coaches 
dash  into  town  and  out  again  like  the  wind  it's  quite  a  sight 
but  a  great  deal  finer  to  look  at  than  to  ride  in  I'm  sure. 
One  of  them  came  from  Zanesville  that's  54  miles  in  four  hours 
the  other  day  that  gives  you  some  idea  of  the  speed  they  go 
at.  You  have  to  put  Express-Stage  on  the  outside  of  your 
letter  you'll  see  it  on  this  one  and  it  costs  three  or  four  times 
as  much  but  if  one  is  in  a  hurry  it's  a  wonderful  relief  to  know 
that  your  letter  is  flying  along  as  if  the  Seven-League-Boots 
were  carrying  it  and  you  don't  care  how  much  you  spend. 
The  only  trouble  about  your  taking  the  canal-boat  is  that 
nobody  can  tell  exactly  when  you  will  get  here  they  take  it 
very  easy  and  don't  make  the  least  effort  to  be  on  time  for 
the  coaches.  But  there  are  always  dozens  of  men  and  boys 
hanging  around  the  Capitol  tavern  where  they  all  stop  for 
the  fresh  horses  and  if  you  should  arrive  and  find  nobody  there 
you  could  send  down  word  to  the  store  or  to  the  house  every 
body  knows  where  we  live  by  any  of  them  and  I  will  send 
Nathan  down  with  the  carriage  right  away  you  won't  have 
to  wait  any  time  and  if  it  happened  I  couldn't  come  myself 
you  would  know  the  horses  anyhow  and  Nathan  is  a  tall  thin 
boy  with  a  kind  of  high  nose  and  blue  eyes  you  will  know  him 
by  the  eyes.  But  I'll  be  sure  to  come  for  I  feel  as  if  I  couldn't 
wait  to  see  you. 

Just  now  we  are  very  comfortably  fixed  for  servants  but 
nobody  knows  how  long  it  will  last  it's  a  perfect  procession 
through  my  kitchen.  The  hired  man  has  been  doing  very 
well  and  seems  to  be  steady.  We  gave  him  a  half-holiday 
on  the  Fourth  so  that  he  could  see  the  celebration  and  then 
he  disappeared  and  I  made  sure  he  had  gone  off  to  get  drunk 
the  way  they  all  do  but  it  seems  he  had  walked  out  in  the 
country  to  see  the  people  he  used  to  live  with  and  he  was  at 
work  the  next  day  as  sober  as  could  be.  However  I  am  afraid 
he  is  learning  the  impudent  ways  of  the  rest  of  them  because 
the  other  day  I  was  out  in  the  garden  standing  over  him  to 
see  that  he  weeded  it  properly  and  I  just  thought  I  would 
give  him  a  talking-to  in  a  nice  way  you  know  about  his 
manners  never  saying  but  yes  ma'am  and  no  ma'am.  So  I 
told  him  how  nice  the  colored  people  in  the  South  were  and 
that  nobody  ever  had  to  tell  them  a  thing  about  it  they  are 


THE  MAIL-BAG  57 

so  good-tempered  and  have  so  much  natural  refinement  about 
some  things.  You  know  they  just  watch  the  white  people 
the  quality  they  call  them  Nathan  I  said  and  imitate  them  — 
that  means  do  exactly  the  way  the  white  people  their  masters 
do  and  that's  the  reason  all  the  negro-servants  have  such 
lovely  manners  now  don't  you  think  you  could  do  that? 
He  looked  at  me  and  said  in  his  drawl  Well  but  Mrs.  Ducey 
I  haven't  seen  any  white  person  I  wanted  to  -imitate  yet. 
Did  you  ever  Ma  f  That's  just  a  sample  of  the  kind  of  thing 
you  get  from  servants  up  here.  I  said  Nathan  there  is  one 
thing  I  won't  have  and  that  is  impertinence  and  I  shall  tell 
Mr.  Ducey  what  you  have  said  and  I  went  back  to  the  house. 
So  when  Will  came  home  I  told  him  and  he  was  very  angry 
and  was  going  out  to  send  Nathan  right  off  when  Uncle 
George  who  happened  to  be  here  stuck  in  his  oar  and  I  must 
say  I  think  he  is  very  dictatorial  and  said  he'd  rather  have  a 
rude  boy  hoeing  beans  and  minding  his  business  than  a  polite 
one  who  wasn't  worth  his  salt  like  all  the  rest  we'd  had  except 
Nathan.  And  he  said  if  we  dismissed  him  we'd  be  the  los 
ers  for  a  boy  like  that  could  get  a  job  anywhere  and  he'd 
probably  be  better  satisfied  some  place  where  the  lady  of  the 
house  didn't  hold  up  niggers  for  him  to  pattern  after.  Of 
course  I  hadn't  done  anything  of  the  kind  but  there  is  no 
use  trying  to  argue  with  Uncle  George  he  is  so  obstinate 
the  only  way  to  do  is  to  go  ahead  and  have  your  own  way  and 
let  him  growl  around.  But  Will  crinkled  right  down  and  said 
he  guessed  it  was  more  ignorance  than  impudence  on  Na 
than's  part  and  maybe  I'd  just  better  let  him  alone  in  future. 
William  does  make  me  so  mad  sometimes  he  thinks  because 
Uncle  George  set  him  up  in  business  when  we  came  here  to 
live  that  he  has  to  be  influenced  by  everything  Uncle  George 
says  when  dear  knows  he's  paid  Uncle  George  ten  times  over 
not  in  money  I  believe  he  owes  him  some  yet  but  in  other 
ways.  Just  look  at  the  perfectly  wonderful  way  he's  run  the 
store  there  isn't  such  another  man  in  a  thousand.  But  I 
simply  was  not  going  to  be  bulldozed  that  way  so  I  just  said 
Very  well  if  Nathan  can  get  another  job  so  readily  he  may  try 
I  am  very  glad  to  hear  it  but  I  will  not  submit  to  impudent 
servants  and  you  know  mother  how  much  will-power  I  have 
even  Uncle  George  can't  bend  me  when  I  know  I'm  right.  I 
was  going  out  to  dismiss  him  myself  when  luckily  for  Nathan 


58  NATHAN   BURKE 

Georgie  the  child  has  the  sweetest  disposition  began  to  cry 
and  said  Oh  please  Ma  don't  send  Nathan  away  oh  please 
don't  he's  promised  to  take  me  out  hunting  some  day  and  he 
said  he'd  teach  me  to  swim.  And  then  he  went  on  and  begged 
so  hard  I  just  couldn't  help  giving  in  —  the  dear  little  fellow! 
So  Nathan  got  off  for  once  but  it  shan't  happen  again  for  I 
won't  put  up  with  any  such  behavior. 

George  and  Francie  are  in  the  wildest  state  of  excitement 
about  seeing  Grandma.  Georgie  has  been  going  around 
for  days  saying  Oh  I  wonder  if  she's  brought  my  bonearrers. 
I  couldn't  imagine  what  bonearrers  was  until  by  questioning 
I  found  out  he  meant  a  bow-and-arrows  which  you  promised 
him  last  year.  Francie  insists  that  you  said  you  would  give 
them  to  him  if  he  learned  Instruct  me  in  Thy  statutes  Lord 
Thy  righteous  paths  display  so  as  to  say  it  off  without  a  mis 
take  the  whole  hymn.  But  she  is  probably  only  saying  so 
to  tease  him  for  he  vows  you  never  said  anything  of  the 
sort  and  he  is  a  very  truthful  child  as  you  know.  Francie 
herself  is  perfectly  immersed  in  making  you  a  bead  reticule 
out  of  lavender  silk  twist  crocheted  with  steel  beads  in  a 
Greek  Key  pattern  she  got  out  of  Godey's.  Of  course  she 
can't  do  it  and  has  to  ravel  it  out  and  fix  it  over  again  a  dozen 
times  a  day  I  believe  she  goes  to  bed  with  it  and  it  will  be  as 
black  as  the  chimney-back  before  she's  finished  it  but  she  will 
do  it  you  never  saw  such  persistence.  The  child  is  not  the 
least  like  dear  Sister  she's  all  Blake.  The  other  day  I  heard 
her  out  in  the  kitchen  asking  Mary  if  she  wouldn't  please  do 
something  for  her.  I  called  her  right  in  to  me  and  said 
Francie  dear  that  is  not  the  way  for  a  little  lady  to  speak  to 
the  servants  you  must  always  be  nice  and  pleasant  but  never 
say  please  or  thank  you  that's  for  them  to  say  to  you.  She 
didn't  seem  to  understand  at  all  and  I  had  the  greatest  trouble 
explaining  to  her  about  keeping  them  in  their  places.  She's 
not  very  quick  you  know  altho'  a  good  sweet  child  as  any 
child  of  Sister's  would  be  sure  to  be. 

I  must  close  this  letter  or  it  won't  get  off  and  I'm  right 
down  at  the  bottom  of  the  page  anyhow.  With  dear  love 

ANN. 


CHAPTER  V 

IN   WHICH   WE   HEAR   A   LlTTLE   ANCIENT   HlSTORY 

LONG  years  before  the  hot  radiant  summer  afternoon  on 
which  the  last  of  those  letters  of  which  Chapter  Four  is  made 
up  was  written  and  despatched  by  that  lightning-footed 
messenger  FinnelFs  Coach,  long  before  there  were  any  coaches 
or  any  roads  in  that  part  of  the  world  or  indeed  any  State  of 
Ohio  or  State  of  Louisiana,  and  long  before  Mr.  Nat  Burke 
arrived  to  confer  immortality  upon  his  particular  section  of 
the  country,  old  George  Marsh  set  foot  for  the  first  time  upon 
the  soil  of  the  New  World  at  Castle  Garden;  and  looking 
about  him,  I  daresay  with  some  wonder  but  very  little  con 
cern,  struck  out  with  a  sturdy  heart  into  the  strong  current 
of  adventure.  He  was  not  old  George  Marsh  in  those  days, 
however;  he  was  twenty-one  or  -two,  not  much  the  senior  of 
the  Republic  whereof  he  proposed  to  become  a  citizen,  when 
the  brig  Royal  Charlotte,  forty-seven  days  out  from  Bristol, 
discharged  him  upon  the  pier  at  New  York  with  a  little  ready 
money  in  his  pockets  and  the  rest  of  his  savings  (thirty  odd 
pounds)  sewed  into  the  lining  of  his  waistcoat.  It  was  good 
West-of-England  broadcloth,  that  waistcoat,  and  George 
wore  it  for  ten  years,  until  his  increasing  girth  obliged  him 
regretfully  to  put  it  aside.  Already  this  emigrant  displayed 
some  of  the  qualities  of  a  desirable  member  of  the  common 
wealth;  among  them  a  solid  intelligence  and  a  slow  yet 
trustworthy  sense  of  humor,  a  surprisingly  clear,  cool,  and 
hard  head  for  so  young  a  man,  entire  honesty  coupled  with 
shrewdness,  an  aptitude  for  affairs,  and  a  constitution  that 
carried  him  in  triumph  to  the  age  of  fourscore,  undeterred 
by  a  dozen  changes  of  climate,  the  ordinary  accidents  and 
misadventures  of  life,  the  fevers  of  the  soil,  and  the  murderous 
medical  practice  of  his  day. 

He  came,  he  stayed,  he  prospered.  George  had  learned 
no  profession  nor  trade,  his  gifts  not  lying  in  that  direction, 

59 


60  NATHAN   BURKE 

but  at  any  sort  of  bet,  bargain,  or  dicker  he  achieved  almost 
from  the  first  essay  a  notable  success.  People  talked  fa 
miliarly  or  contemptuously  of  Marsh's  luck;  but  in  Burke's 
observation  —  which,  to  be  sure,  only  embraced  some  half- 
score  of  his  later  years  —  there  was  no  such  thing;  it  was 
Marsh's  temperament,  Marsh's  robust  and  steadfast  confi 
dence  in  himself.  He  was  not  reckless,  he  was  never  fool 
ishly  sanguine  or  uplifted;  he  would  as  soon  have  thrown  his 
dollars  in  the  fire  as  gone  about  boasting  of  how  he  made 
them  and  would  make  more.  The  core  and  secret  of  his  suc 
cess  might,  perhaps,  be  found  in  an  utter  lack  of  imagination, 
a  kind  of  inability  to  perceive  that  things  might  turn  to  the 
bad  for  him;  truly  they  never  did,  but  George  Marsh  wasted 
no  sleepless  nights  in  worry  about  that  possibility.  By  dint 
of  believing  in  himself  he  won,  without  effort,  the  belief  of 
others  —  potest  quia  posse  videtur!  His  was  the  stolid  and 
unemotional  faith  of  the  Briton,  who  would  not  know  if  he 
should  be  beaten,  and  o,ut  of  this  nettle  danger  will  invariably 
pluck  this  flower  safety. 

Old  George,  by  the  time  Burke  came  to  know  him,  pos 
sessed  few  other  distinctively  British  characteristics;  he 
never  went  back  to  visit  his  native  land,  and  became  within 
a  short  while  of  his  landing  thoroughly  Americanized  in 
dress,  speech,  and  habits  of  mind.  If  he  did  not  go  about 
dragging  his  coat-tails  in  the  presence  of  the  mother  country, 
—  such  being  the  approved  and  popular  attitude  of  that  day 
for  most  Columbian  patriots,  —  it  was  because  that  method 
of  displaying  one's  opinions  was  foreign  to  his  character  and 
indeed  moved  him  to  saturnine  merriment.  After  a  residence 
of  some  eight  or  ten  years  in  the  city  of  New  York,  during 
which  he  turned  over  his  thirty  pounds  many  times  and  ac 
quired  something  of  a  name  for  parts  and  prudence,  he  left 
his  affairs  there  under  a  trusted  surveillance,  and  started  for 
the  South  in  search  of  new  commercial  worlds  to  conquer. 
He  was  now  a  well-established  and  well-to-do  bachelor  of 
thirty;  the  century  was  drawing  to  its  close,  and  the  Louisi 
ana  Purchase  or  who  knows  what  other  mighty  changes 
looming  on  the  horizon.  For  all  Marsh's  prosaic  turn,  and 
oddly  at  variance  with  it,  there  must  have  been  a  sort  of  re 
serve  fund  of  restlessness,  enterprise,  and  desire  of  adventure 
within  him.  It  may  be  that  is  what  beguiled  him  over-seas 


WE  HEAR   A   LITTLE   ANCIENT   HISTORY      61 

in  the  beginning.  Whatever  feeling  moved  him,  it  was  some 
thing  that  could  no  longer  be  satisfied  by  his  real-estate, 
mortgage-and-loan  activities  in  New  York;  and  it  is  strange 
to  behold  this  hard,  resolute,  acute,  and  thorough  man  of 
business,  uninfluenced  by  boyish  dreams  or  illusions,  deliber 
ately  handing  over  all  that  he  had  worked  so  steadily  to 
gain  into  the  power  of  an  always  problematical  deputy  and 
departing,  serene  of  mind,  upon  a  hazard  of  new  fortunes. 
When  Burke  got  to  know  him  well  enough,  he  once  ventured 
to  probe  him  with  a  question  or  two  about  this  action.  "I 
wonder,  Mr.  Marsh,"  said  Nathan,  "that  you  had  the  hardi 
hood  to  intrust  your  business  to  anybody  but  yourself  and 
walk  off  to  New  Orleans  with  a  bag  of  money  to  see  what 
could  be  done  there.  The  whole  thing  might  have  gone  up 
the  chimney  in  the  time  it  took  to  send  a  letter  in  those  days. 
Didn't  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  your  partner  might  —  ?  An 
honest  man  makes  terribly  costly  mistakes  sometimes,  and  a 
dishonest  one  with  such  opportunities  — !"  The  old  fellow 
shifted  his  tobacco,  eying  his  questioner,  and  spat  into  one 
of  the  three-cornered  wooden  boxes  filled  with  white  sand  or 
sawdust  that  were  kept  about  the  store  for  that  purpose. 
"No,  I  never  worried,"  he  said;  "you  see,  Nat, I'd  picked  the 
right  man." 

With  the  advantage  of  added  years,  experience,  and  a  much 
larger  capital  Marsh  did  as  well  in  New  Orleans  as  he  had  in 
New  York,  although  from  the  first  he  had  no  great  liking 
for  either  the  climate  or  the  conditions.  "Your  money  come 
pretty  near  too  easy,"  Burke  has  heard  him  say.  "People 
lived  high,  made  a  lot,  spent  a  lot.  It's  that  way  all  over  the 
South.  I  lived  in  all  about  ten  years  there,  but  I  never  liked 
it  —  never  liked  it.  I  got  out  quick  as  I  heard  they  were 
opening  the  Northwest  Territory  and  going  to  make  States 
out  of  it.  I  wouldn't  ever  advise  any  young  man  to  go  South 
to  live.  Oh,  I  don't  say  but  what  it's  a  good  place  to  make 
money  in  —  to  trade  to,  you  know.  I've  done  considerable 
of  that  in  my  time,  sending  flatboats  down  the  river.  Steam 
navigation's  about  knocked  all  that  business  into  a  cocked 
hat,  though,  nowadays.  You  can  send  your  goods  down  just 
the  same,  but  the  freight  charges  are  so  much  higher  there 
ain't  the  profits  in  it  there  used  to  be.  A  whole  fleet  of  flat- 
boats  hardly  cost  you  anything  in  those  days.  Everybody's 


62  NATHAN   BURKE 

got  a  kind  of  rage  for  hurry,  now.1  You  mark  my  words, 
the  minute  these  railroads  get  good  and  going  —  and  it  won't 
take  long  —  the  minute  that  happens,  then  the  whole  canal- 
boat  trade  will  go  to  glory!  That's  my  judgment,  sir,  and  I 
ain't  often  mistaken.  I've  sold  out  what  I  held  in  the  Miami 
and  the  Erie  for  that  very  reason  —  no  use  waiting  till  the 
bottom  falls  out  of  'em.  The  other  fellow  can  do  that  and 
then  scoot  around  and  scare  up  a  buyer  for  his  stock  if  he 
can;  I'll  salt  my  money  away  somewhere  else.  Now  the 
South  hasn't  got  any  railroads  or  any  canals,  either;  they 
think  down  there  that  this  steamboat  traffic  on  the  Missis 
sippi  is  going  to  last  'em  till  the  end  of  time.  It  won't.  It 
won't.  Not  if  I  know  anything  about  it.  You  let  some 
fellow  with  a  little  get-up-and-get  come  along  and  go  to 
building  a  railroad  or  two,  and  where'll  your  steamboat  be  ? 
It's  looking  a  good  ways  ahead,  but  it's  bound  to  come.  Only 
thing  is,  they're  slow  down  there  —  that's  what  I  couldn't 
stand  when  I  lived  there  —  they're  slow  and  they're  fairly 
et  up  with  niggers.  That's  why  I  say  South's  no  place  for  a 
young  man.  Make  your  money  off  'em  if  you  want  to,  but 
don't  live  there." 

Mr.  Marsh's  own  career  bore  out  his  theories.  He  turned 
his  attention  chiefly  to  the  sugar  and  cotton  markets  while 
in  New  Orleans,  and  I  believe  made  the  bulk  of  his  fortune 
there,  coming  away  towards  1810  a  much  wealthier  man 
than  when  he  had  arrived  a  decade  earlier.  This  too,  de 
spite  the  fact  that  after  having  been  two  or  three  years  in  the 
city  and  observing  a  number  of  good  opportunities,  he  had, 
acting  with  his  customary  promptness  and  decision,  written 
to  a  younger  brother  in  Bristol,  paid  his  passage  out,  and  set 
him  up  in  business  at  a  heavy  outlay  which,  by  the  way,  he 
never  entirely  recovered  —  perhaps  never  expected  to  re 
cover.  George  was  reputed  a  hard  man,  yet  he  was  a  good 
son,  a  good  brother.  I  have  seen  some  of  the  letters  he  wrote 
the  family  —  a  patriarchal  English  family  of  at  least  a  dozen 
children  —  whom  he  left  behind  in  Bristol.  They  are  kind, 
blunt  missives ;  he  sent  them  money ;  he  made  them  presents : 
Virginia  tobacco,  New  England  rum,  and  maple-sugar,  a 
pair  of  white  doeskin  moccasins  embroidered  with  beads  and 

1  These  words  of  wisdom  were  probably  uttered  about  the  year 
1840.  What  would  old  Marsh  say  now? 


WE   HEAR  A   LITTLE  ANCIENT  HISTORY      63 

colored  quills  that  he  got  of  some  Indian  trader  in  what  dusky 
wigwam  of  the  wilderness  for  a  little  sister  Sukey,  of  whom  he 
was  very  fond.  The  child  died  in  a  consumption  before 
these  trifles  reached  her  —  a  tragedy  sad  by  its  very  little 
ness.  The  family  seem  to  have  taken  this  liberality  as  their 
due;  there  is  generally  some  one  member  of  a  connection 
playing  Providence  for  all  the  rest.  They  accepted  George's 
offerings  and  asked  for  more,  told  him  their  debts  and  dis 
tresses,  reminded  him  of  all  the  birthdays  and  weddings, 
thanked  him  and  prayed  for  his  welfare  in  good  set  terms. 
And  followed  his  mandates  with  tolerable  faithfulness  con 
sidering  the  distance  of  a  thousand  leagues  or  so  from  whence 
he  issued  them.  In  no  one  of  their  letters,  not  even  his  wid 
owed  mother's,  have  I  been  able  to  discover  a  single  refer 
ence  to  his  coming  home;  nor  does  he  ever  seem  to  have 
looked  forward  to  a  return  and  reunion  himself.  It  was  not 
long  after  his  mother's  death,  when  the  family,  what  with 
marriages  and  other  deaths,  seemed  to  be  about  to  disin 
tegrate,  as  families  do,  that  George  wrote  to  his  brother  Walter, 
suggesting  the  young  man's  journey  to  America.  Walter 
came  pliably  enough;  and  it  must  have  been  a  strange  meet 
ing.  The  brothers  had  not  seen  each  other  for  twenty  years; 
Walter  was  a  mere  child  when  George  left  home.  Were  they 
pleased,  surprised,  disappointed  ?  Old  George,  in  later  years, 
rarely  referred  to  his  brother,  and  then  with  a  certain  toler 
ance  or  negligence  —  quite  unconscious,  I  am  sure  —  as  if  he 
might  have  been  speaking  of  a  child.  He  was  so  much  older 
than  the  other,  and  of  so  essentially  different  a  character  and 
experience,  that  they  could  not  in  nature  have  been  compan 
ions.  Perhaps  George  found  it  unexpectedly  difficult  to  hold 
Walter  up  to  his  standards  of  business  energy;  he  may  have 
discovered  in  his  junior  occasional  obliquities  and  weaknesses 
for  which,  in  his  harsh  judgment,  there  was  no  excuse.  It  is 
undeniable  that  W.  MARSH,  PRODUCE  AND  COMMISSION,  the 
concern  that  started  out  with  so  fine  a  flourish,  would  have 
gone  to  the  wall  half  a  dozen  times  but  for  George's  money, 
his  clear  head,  his  quick  and  vigorous  action.  It  was  not 
long  before  George  Marsh,  who  had  not  lived  and  labored  to 
the  age  of  forty  without  becoming  pretty  conversant  with 
men  and  the  world  at  large,  relegated  his  brother  to  a  shelf 
of  ample  salary  and  almost  no  duties,  "picked  out  the  right 


64  NATHAN   BURKE 

man,"  according  to  his  habit,  for  the  management  of  the 
produce-and-commission  business  and  turned  his  own  eyes 
to  the  great  Northwest  Territory  and  the  new  fields.  He 
wearied  of  the  lotos,  this  hardy  Ulysses,  stable  of  purpose 
among  all  his  wanderings.  Gladly  he  resigned  to  Walter 
that  pursuit  of  making  money  too  easily  —  or  of  spending 
it  more  easily  still,  for  which  the  younger  man  had  exhibited 
such  an  aptitude.  George  did  not  commit  the  mistake  of 
supposing  that  he  had  enlisted  Walter's  gratitude  and  affec 
tion  by  his  generous  provision;  he  knew  better.  That  is  a 
brave  soul  that  can  support  the  sense  of  obligation  nobly. 
Do  you  and  I  like  the  man  we  owe  ?  Would  we  not  rather  a 
thousand  times  he  owed  us,  no  matter  what  our  loss  and 
inconvenience  ?  And  am  I  grateful  or  am  I  only  anxious  to 
pay  him  off  and  be  done  with  him  ?  Of  all  the  fantastic  masks 
wherein  humanity  delights  to  trick  itself,  I  think  that  Grati 
tude  and  Benevolence  wear  the  most  ironic  face.  Here  lies 
Lazarus  at  my  gate  —  a  painful  sight,  for  I  am  a  compassion 
ate  creature.  Faugh!  Take  the  poor  wretch  up,  see  to  his 
sores,  feed  him,  shelter  and  comfort  him,  not  alone  that  he 
may  suffer  less,  but  that  I  may  sleep  a  little  better.  Do  you 
wonder  that  he  is  not  always  grateful  ?  The  fact  is  that  Laz 
arus,  being  whole  once  more,  is  ashamed  of  the  ditch,  and  the 
doorstep,  and  the  curs  that  licked  him.  He  would  be  as  well 
pleased  never  to  see  me  again  who  put  him  in  mind  of  his 
degradation;  he  wants,  naturally  enough,  to  pay  me  out  and 
go  his  way  and  forget  that  miserable  hour. 

Walter  may  have  chafed  under  the  burden  of  George's 
liberality,  but  he  never  made  any  effort  towards  discharging 
that  account ;  and,  after  all,  George  had  taken  the  respon 
sibility  of  transplanting  his  brother  and  in  conscience  he 
should  bear  the  costs.  Unlike  his  senior,  Walter  took  very 
kindly  to  the  semi-tropic  heats,  the  linen  clothes,  the  Panama 
straws,  the  juleps,  the  gumbos,  the  dazzlingly  pretty  girls, 
and  fire-eating  gallants  of  his  adopted  country.  Walter 
was  a  good-looking  and  highly  ornamental  young  man,  a 
dandy,  a  great  beau.  In  a  society  where  perhaps  birth  and 
pedigree  counted  more  than  in  any  other  city  on  the  conti 
nent,  it  was  particularly  easy  to  believe  the  report  mysteri 
ously  spread  abroad  shortly  after  his  arrival  that  he  was  the 
banished  scion  of  some  illustrious  house,  instead  of  the  fifth 


WE  HEAR   A   LITTLE   ANCIENT  HISTORY      65 

or  sixth  son  of  an  honest  green-grocer  of  Bristol.  And  if  that 
did  not  exactly  account  for  his  brother  George,  it  was  also 
quite  easy  to  believe  that  the  name  and  relationship,  for  some 
romantic  reason,  were  alike  a  blind.  Even  George  himself 
never  denied  it.  He  used  to  grin  diabolically,  watching  his 
brother  cringe  and  change  color  when  these  stories  were 
hinted  at  in  their  joint  presence.  "Ask  him,  he'll  tell  you," 
he  would  say.  "Isn't  it  strange  how  such  a  tale  should 
have  got  around  ?  Ask  him,  sir;  I  know  my  place;  I  ain't 
going  to  tell  tales  out  o'  school.  /  can't  say  anything  — 
but,  honestly  now,  d'ye  think  we  look  much  alike?"  In 
fact,  George,  who  was  ten  or  twelve  years  older  than  the 
other,  who  wore  a  coat  five  seasons  behind  the  fashion,  who 
chewed  tobacco,  who  sometimes  went  unshaved  for  days,  who 
tied  his  neckcloth  like  a  halter  and  was  sadly  indifferent  to 
the  state  of  his  wristbands  and  finger-nails,  who  shunned  the 
society  of  women  and  was  only  too  ready  with  an  oath  or  a 
foul  word  —  honest,  coarse,  hard-headed,  bargain-driving 
George  showed  no  sort  of  resemblance  to  Walter,  than  whom 
a  finer  young  gentleman  never  existed.  The  institution  of 
slavery  appeared  to  him  extremely  beneficial  to  all  parties 
concerned,  whereas  George,  for  sundry  utilitarian  reasons, 
disapproved  of  it.  One  of  Walter's  earliest  acts  was  to  pro 
vide  himself  with  a  lively  and  well-trained  body-servant,  for 
whom  George  paid  fourteen  hundred  dollars,  getting  a  slight 
discount  at  that.  George  owned  no  slaves  himself ;  he 
knotted  his  unspeakable  cravat  with  his  own  hands;  his 
boots  went  unblacked  —  why  not  ?  He  could  afford  to 
please  himself,  and  we  may  imagine  that  Walter  many  a  time 
viewed  with  envy  that  slattern  independence.  Riches  and 
poverty  can  do  as  they  choose;  it  is  the  middleman  that 
must  keep  up  an  appearance.  I  knew  a  millionnaire  once  that 
wore  a  straw  hat  all  winter!  If  I  should  try  it,  my  friends 
would  have  me  in  the  poor-house  the  next  day.  George  was 
not  a  millionnaire,  but  there  was  plenty  of  money  in  the 
pockets  of  those  soiled,  shiny,  old  drab  breeches,  and  Walter 
lived  on  him,  and  disliked  him,  and  was  afraid  of  him  in 
true  brotherly  fashion. 

Some  time  in  1805  Walter  married.  He  married  Cornelia, 
second  daughter  of  Daniel  Patrick,  Esquire  of  Avoyelles 
Parish,  Louisiana.  George,  who  was  away  in  the  North  at 


66  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  time  of  the  wedding  (a  good  deal  to  Walter's  relief),  pro 
fessed  to  regard  the  match  as  a  prodigious  stroke  of  business. 
" Three  hundred  niggers!  By  damn,  Walt's  done  better 
than  I  looked  for!"  he  said  with  a  sardonic  relish;  "trouble 
is,  it's  a  whaling  big  family  and  there  won't  be  so  much  apiece 
when  the  slaves  and  the  plantation  come  to  be  divided  up 
among  'em.  However,  they'll  always  have  a  roof  over  their 
heads  and  a  belly-full  of  victuals,  anyhow."  Such  was  Mr. 
Marsh's  enlightened  attitude  towards  the  holy  estate  of 
matrimony.  He  relaxed  somewhat  upon  meeting  the  bride, 
who  was  a  pretty,  gentle,  fond,  young  creature.  "I  —  I  hope 
you'll  be  happy  with  Walter,  my  dear,"  he  said,  holding  her 
timid  little  hand  awkwardly;  "'tain't  all  roses,  you  know  - 
a  person's  got  to  take  the  world  as  it  comes.  Don't  be  afraid 
of  me  —  I'm  kind  of  rough,  I  reckon,  but  you  won't  see  me 
often.  Here's  a  little  something  to  buy  knick-knacks  with. 
Name  one  of  the  babies  Sukey,  will  you?"  Little  Mrs. 
Walter  shrunk  from  him  in  spite  of  his  gruff  kindness;  she 
clung  to  her  Walter  whom  she  thought  the  handsomest, 
cleverest,  most  noble  man  in  the  world,  and  wondered  how  he 
could  have  such  a  brother.  Was  it  true  that  Walt  was  really 
the  son  of  the  Earl  of  Langham  and  his  name  not  Marsh  at 
all,  and  George  only  his  father's  factor  ?  Walter  hushed  her 
questions  with  a  mystic  smile.  But  that  story  survives  yet 
among  some  of  their  numerous  descendants,  and  will  probably 
be  in  circulation  on  the  Day  of  Doom. 

George  Marsh,  in  accordance  with  his  prediction,  was  not 
a  frequent  visitor  at  his  brother's  house.  Walter  never 
could  have  been  much  at  ease  in  his  company,  and  more  than 
likely  Mrs.  Walter  found  it  hard  to  endure  his  slovenly  habits, 
his  coarse  manners,  the  overbearing  style  in  which  he  some 
times  addressed  her  precious  Walter,  who  was  too  generous 
1  and  too  thoroughly  a  gentleman  ever  to  resent  it.  George 
meant  well,  George  had  a  kind  heart,  she  knew  that,  but, 
mercy — !  George  understood  her;  her  little  patient  or 
patronizing  airs  moved  him  at  once  with  a  cynical  amuse 
ment  and  a  kind  of  pity.  I  have  no  doubt  he  had  his  hours 
of  lonesomeness  and  longing,  this  middle-aged,  unlovely 
sceptic;  he  would  have  liked  a  little  affection,  this  shaggy 
bug-bear,  under  whose  eyes  the  negro  servants  trembled, 
flying  about  their  work  with  a  frantic  energy.  His  brother's 


WE   HEAR   A   LITTLE   ANCIENT   HISTORY      67 

little  girls  received  his  presents  in  awestruck  silence,  or  were 
made  to  thank  Uncle  George  in  neat,  cut-and-dried  speeches; 
they  never  dreamed  of  loving  him,  and  he  was  by  far  too  much 
of  a  philosopher  to  expect  it.  When  these  weak  desires  as 
sailed  him,  he  probably  shut  them  out  of  his  heart,  and  turned 
with  a  greater  zest  to  his  desk  and  ledgers.  Nobody  knew 
how  much  George  was  worth  by  this  time;  indeed  he  went 
North  for  good  five  or  six  years  after  the  marriage,  and 
thenceforward  was  seldom  seen  in  New  Orleans.  He  settled 
himself  (permanently  at  last)  in  Ohio,  took  up  land  right  and 
left,  bought,  sold,  loaned,  borrowed,  turned  his  dollars  about 
and  about,  shrewd,  confident,  and  successful  as  always.  The 
second  war  with  Great  Britain  came  on,  passed  over  with  a 
financial  panic,  a  wake  of  hard  times,  yet  left  George  Marsh 
unscathed.  The  last  visit  he  made  to  the  South  was  in  1817, 
after  his  brother's  death,  when  he  went  to  settle  up  Walter's 
affairs,  which  were  in  a  very  involved  state.  "  They'd  about 
run  through  everything,"  he  told  Burke  years  — twenty-five 
years  —  afterwards  in  one  of  his  moments  of  confidence ; 
"I  saved  what  I  could  out  of  the  muddle  for  Cornelia,  but  it 
was  so  little  she  thinks  to  this  day  that  Brother  George 
Hook  advantage.'  She  couldn't  tell  what  was  being  done, 
and  she  only  knows  they  always  lived  very  handsomely  and 
had  everything  they  wanted,  and  it  was  certainly  very  strange 
that  when  poor  Walt  died,  Brother  George  should  come  along 
and  take  charge  of  everything  and  presently  tell  her  there 
wasn't  anything  left !  Of  course  I  '  took  advantage '  — 
that's  how  I  made  my  money,  ' taking  advantage,'  hey? 
Lord  love  you,  Nathan  Burke,  that's  what  a  man  gets  for 
being  saving  and  upright  and  industrious  and  careful.  I'm  a 
rich  man,  and  Walter  died,  and  when  I  wound  up  his  affairs, 
the  widow  and  orphans  didn't  get  anything  —  therefore  I 
fleeced  'em.  Logical,  ain't  it?  I  set  him  up  in  business 
and  kept  him  going  for  years  —  and  here  I  am  rolling  in 
money  and  he  was  fairly  smothered  with  debts  —  so,  of  course, 
I  must  have  cheated  him.  That  follows,  don't  it?  I  pay 
my  debts  and  work  hard  and  live  straight  and  my  neighbor 
trusts  me  because  I've  always  treated  him  square  —  so  it's 
perfectly  natural  for  me  to  turn  around  and  skin  my  own 
brother's  children  —  oh,  yes !  By  God,  they  wanted  to  have 
a  funeral  that  would  have  cost  a  thousand  dollars,  and  the 


68  NATHAN   BURKE 

very  shirt  Walt  died  in  wasn't  paid  for.  I'll  bet  there  wasn't 
a  loan-shark  in  N 'Orleans  I  didn't  dicker  and  jaw  into  some 
kind  of  compromise  —  and  if  I  hadn't,  where'd  they  have 
been  ?  On  the  county,  sir !  Cornelia's  relatives  couldn't 
do  a  thing  for  her  —  they  were  all  in  the  same  box  together 

—  nice,  pleasant,  good-looking,  easy-going  lot  you  couldn't 
trust  with  money  any  more  than  you  could  a  child.     They 
didn't  like  me  —  Lord,  no!     But,  by  damn,  sir,  they  found 
me  mighty  convenient.     Oh,  well,  you  can't  blame  a  woman 

—  what  do  they  know  about  it  ?     Cornelia  knows  at  the 
bottom  of  her  heart  that  I've  done  pretty  well  by  her  and  the 
girls;  likely  she  thinks  it's  because  I'm  kind  of  remorseful. 
But  they  know  I've  done  what  was  right  by  'em  in  the  long 
run.     They  ain't  any  of  'em  mercenary  —  at  least  they  ain't 
conscious  of  it  —  they  do  their  best  to  be  kind  and  civil  to 
me.     They  think  Uncle  George  is  a  pretty  rough  customer, 
and  if  I  was  a  poor  old  man  and  had  to  be  taken  care  of,  they 
wouldn't  be  fighting  for  the  job  —  but  they'd  do  it,  in  the 
end.     They're  all  right;   their  hearts  are  in  the  right  place. 
Most  peoples'  are,  Nat,  most  peoples'  are.     Almost  every 
body  does  what's  right.     You'd  rather,  you  know,  even  if 
you  got  the  little  end  of  the  bargain  by  it.     Cornelia  and  the 
girls  just  think  it  ain't  very  nice  to  have  me  'round  spitting 
tobacco-juice  all  over  their  nice  new  carpets  —  what  d'ye 
call    'em  —  Wilton  ?     But   they  ain't   really   mercenary  — • 
they'd  just  about  as  lief  have  my  money  as  not,  but  they 
ain't  sitting  around  waiting  for  me  to   die.     'Tain't  many 
people  that  are  as  mean  as  that.     No,  they  ain't  mercenary  — 
only  I  bet  ther'd  have  been  hell  to  pay  if  I'd  ever  wanted  to 
get  married  —  ho,  ho!" 

Old  George  told  the  bare  truth  when  he  said  (very  simply 
and  with  no  notion  of  vaunting  himself)  that  he  had  done 
well  by  his  brother's  children.  He  would  have  brought 
them  all  North  and  made  a  home  for  them  if  the  poor  widow 
had  not  tragically  insisted  on  going  back  to  her  mother  on  the 
Avoyelles  plantation.  He  sent  the  girls  to  school;  he  pro 
vided  them  handsomely  with  clothes,  trinkets,  pocket-money; 
he  had  them  North  regularly  every  summer  and  took  them 
on  delightful  jaunts  even  as  far  as  Philadelphia  and  New 
York;  and  gave  them  royal  presents  as  they  successively 
married.  It  is  doubtful  whether  they  would  have  fared  as 


WE   HEAR   A   LITTLE  ANCIENT   HISTORY      6& 

well  had  their  father  lived.  All  the  girls  married  absurdly 
young  according  to  present-day  ideas;  and,  as  they  were  a 
prolific  race  the  family  with  these  ramifications  is  scattered 
widely  up  and  down  all  our  Southern  States.  The  oldest 
daughter  was  the  only  one  of  them  who  married  in  the  North, 
having  met  William  Ducey  while  on  one  of  their  visits  to 
Uncle  George.  The  old  man  never  interposed  any  advice 
about  these  matches.  "It's  a  kind  of  hit-or-miss  business 
anyhow,  marrying,"  was  his  philosophic  creed;  and  it  is 
only  fair  to  say  that  they  all  turned  out  very  well  —  all  but 
one,  that  is. 

It  was  several  years  before  Burke,  who  was  not  troubling 
his  head  much  at  that  time  about  the  Marshes  and  their 
affairs,  learned  what  Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh  and  all  her  family 
considered  the  ghastly  circumstances  of  Cornelia  the  young- 
er's  marriage.  They  kept  poor  little  Francie's  parentage  as 
secret  as  if  there  had  been  something  disgraceful  about  it; 
and  it  happened  that  Mr.  Marsh  was  the  person  who  en 
lightened  Nathan  by  casually  mentioning  some  of  the  facts 
in  the  course  of  talk  one  day.  It  never  would  have  entered 
into  old  George's  mind  that  the  subject  was  one  either  to  be 
avoided  or  gossiped  over;  he  was  without  affectations;  and 
I  have  forgot  now  what  led  him  to  refer  to  it.  "Connie  — 
my  niece,  Cornelia,  Francie's  mother,  you  know  —  was  the 
prettiest  one  of  the  girls,"  he  said;  "just  about  set  her  mother 
wild  when  she  run  off  and  married  an  actor.  So  far  as  I 
know  he  was  a  decent  enough  fellow  and  treated  Connie 
right.  But  they've  always  had  a  great  notion  of  family,  and 
I  guess  Cornelia  had  looked  pretty  high  for  Connie  - 
wanted  her  to  marry  some  rich  planter's  son,  likely  —  she 
might  have  been  a  heap  worse  off.  I'm  a  plain  man  myself  - 
I  don't  go  much  on  family.  Only  objection  I  could  see  to  it 
was  that  actors  are  a  kind  of  shiftless,  hand-to-mouth  set,  and 
Connie  mightn't  have  had  a  very  comfortable  time  of  it. 
She  didn't  live  to  find  out,  poor  girl !  They  both  died  within 
a  week  of  each  other  —  of  the  fever,  you  know  —  down  there 
in  N'Orleans  the  summer  of  '29  or  '30,  I  forget  which. 
They'd  only  been  married  a  year  or  so  and  just  had  the  one 
little  girl.  Ducey  was  in  business  down  there  and  not  doing 
very  well,  either,  betwixt  you  and  me  and  the  post.  His  wife 
got  scared,  and  you  know  when  Anne  Ducey's  got  her  head 


70  NATHAN   BURKE 

set,  Burke,  there  ain't  anybody  can  do  a  thing  with  her;  the 
fever  got  pretty  bad,  and  she  just  made  Ducey  pack  up  and 
let  the  business  go  to  pelhenny  and  took  her  own  baby  and 
little  Francie  and  cleared  out  for  Ohio  and  Uncle  George. 
Young  man,  what  did  I  tell  you?  The  South  ain't  any 
place  to  live  ml" 


CHAPTER  VI 
RES  ANGUSTA  DOMI 

IF  Nathan  had  known  what  was  within  those  letters  of 
Mrs.  Ducey's  which  he  so  carefully  carried  to  the  post  for 
her,  he  might  possibly,  even  at  that  early  date,  have  felt 
the  same  twitch  of  amusement  with  which  he  read  them  in 
after  days.  We  may  not  want  our  valets  to  think  us  heroes, 
but  let  no  man  disregard  his  servant's  opinion  of  him  or 
suppose  that  he  permits  himself  no  criticisms.  If  all  the 
hirelings  could  get  the  public  ear  and  valorously  tell  all  they 
know  and  have  seen,  what  a  destruction  of  reputations  there 
would  be,  and  what  a  reversal  of  sentiment !  In  six  weeks 
Nat,  who  was  only  a  boy  and  not  an  unusually  gifted  boy 
at  that,  or  any  way  more  astute  than  others,  knew  Mrs. 
Ducey  with  a  perfect  thoroughness  and  certainty,  whereas  she 
knew  him  not  at  all.  In  fact,  the  idea  that  a  hired  man 
could  have  a  character  other  than  the  marketable  one  for 
honesty  and  sobriety  would  have  struck  her  as  a  laughable 
novelty,  in  the  way  of  theories.  Perhaps  if  he  had  been  a 
woman,  Nathan,  like  the  other  maidservants,  would  not  have 
remained  long  in  the  Ducey  household;  but  belonging  to 
the  opposite  sex  he  very  soon  unconsciously  adopted  towards 
Mrs.  Anne  the  attitude  of  her  husband,  her  uncle,  every  man 
with  whom  she  came  in  contact  —  an  attitude  of  humorous 
and  affectionate  tolerance.  Her  prettiness  delighted  the 
senses;  her  unreasonableness  tickled  infinitely;  there  was 
to  the  masculine  mind  something  amusingly  womanly  and 
winning  in  her  sweet-tempered  obstinacy;  she  was  so  anxious 
to  be  kind  one  forgot  that  she  was  not  in  the  least  humane. 
What  man  ever  lived  who  demanded  that  a  woman  should 
be  logical  ?  What  man  ever  seriously  resented  a  woman's 
tyrannies?  Here  I  sit  who  have  paraded  at  the  head  of 
armies  and  issued  centurion's  orders,  here  I  most  abjectly 
sit,  a  petticoat-governed  man,  and  care  not  who  knows  it ! 
My  daughter  commands  me  to  eat  oatmeal  porridge  which 

71 


72  NATHAN   BURKE 

I  abhor  —  but  do  I  rebel?  Not  I.  I  sit  down  and  eat  it ! 
I  swathe  myself  in  loathed  woollens,  I  swallow  quarts  of 
abominable  physic  at  her  behest.  Unquestionably  I  wouldn't 
do  it  for  my  son;  I  would  invite  him  with  much  forcible 
language  to  mind  his  business  and  let  me  alone.  My  son 
and  I  would  have  a  more  peaceable  house,  but  would  it  be  so 
happy  ?  I  think  not.  My  daughter  would  endure  tortures, 
she  would  lie  through  thick  and  thin  to  save  me  from  an  en 
tirely  just  and  merited  punishment  —  but  she  wouldn't  trust 
me  with  the  brandy  bottle  !  Yet  she  knows  me  to  be  a  tem 
perate  man,  she  believes  with  all  her  heart  and  soul  that  I 
am  a  gentleman.  She  stoutly  supports  the  theory  that  her 
father  is  the  greatest  warrior,  statesman,  jurist  that  ever 
existed  —  and  then  she  reads  the  old  fellow  lectures  becom 
ing  to  an  audience  of  fifteen-year-old  children.  I  fear  they 
fall  on  unfruitful  soil,  like  some  of  those  Nat  Burke  used  to 
receive  from  Mrs.  Ducey,  forty  odd  years  ago. 

The  boy  always  tried  to  listen  respectfully;  he  cut  the 
grass,  he  rubbed  the  harness,  he  groomed  the  horses  to  the 
best  of  his  ability,  feeling  first  surprise,  then  perhaps  a  little 
resentment,  and  then  a  profound  and  lasting  amusement 
at  Mrs.  Ducey's  painstaking  supervision.  She  stung  his 
pride  to  the  quick,  yet  for  the  soul  of  him  Nathan  could  not 
be  angry  with  her.  There  was,  after  all,  something  attrac 
tively  free  and  fearless  in  her  absurd  bullying,  her  supreme 
confidence  that  she  was  always  in  the  right;  a  certain 
strength  of  character  showed  through  all  her  suspicion  and 
stubbornness.  Nathan,  who  could  not  have  understood 
any  of  these  fine  phrases  at  the  time,  nevertheless  obscurely 
felt  their  meaning.  He  used  to  observe  the  Marys,  Susans, 
Bridgets,  who  filed  in  and  out  of  the  Ducey  kitchen,  some 
angry  and  impudent,  some  forlorn,  bewildered,  futilely  pro 
testing,  with  a  puzzled  wonder.  Why  was  it  that  none  of 
them  could  get  along  with  Mrs.  Ducey  ?  He  had  no  trouble. 
She  —  why,  she  didn't  mean  anything  —  you  just  had  to 
know  how  to  take  her.  And  look  how  kind  and  good  she 
was  if  you  were  sick  or  hurt  yourself  —  or  anything.  These 
arguments,  when  he  occasionally  advanced  them,  were  with 
out  effect;  one  and  all,  the  cooks  and  chambermaids  turned 
on  him  with  helpless  fury.  What  did  he  know  about  it  - 
nothing  but  a  boy.  They  wouldn't  be  talked  to  that  way 


RES   ANGUSTA   DOMI  73 

by  Mrs.  Ducey,  talked  to  as  if  they  was  —  as  if  they  was  — 
they  was  respectable  girls,  they  wouldn't  go  for  to  do  any 
such  thing  as  Mrs.  Ducey  said  they  did.  They  were  doing 
their  best,  and  everything  can't  always  be  right,  and  they 
hadn't  any  more  idea  where  her  silver  pickle-tongs  was  than 
the  man  in  the  moon,  and  it  was  the  first  time  they  had  ever 
burned  anything,  and  they  worked  hard,  and  they  never 
slapped  Georgie  in  the  world,  he  told  a  big  story  when  he 
said  they  did,  and  indeed  you  may  talk  your  head  off,  Eliza, 
for  all  the  good  it'll  do  you,  she'll  just  say  "H'm!"  And  — 
oh,  shut  up,  Nathan,  you  ain't  nothing  but  a  boy!  Heavens, 
how  many  of  these  shabby  little  dramas  did  Nat  witness ! 
They  passed  over  without  leaving  much  impression  on  him; 
he  supposed  all  feminine  households  were  the  same;  it  was 
in  the  nature  of  women  shut  up  in  the  house  together  all  day 
long  to  squabble,  he  opined.  When,  as  sometimes  happened, 
his  employer  surreptitiously  stole  out  and  bestowed  on  the 
departing  ones  kind  words  and  a  little  extra  money,  the 
boy  viewed  that  proceeding  with  utter  contempt.  If  Ducey 
was  going  to  let  his  wife  run  things,  he  ought  to  let  her,  Nat 
thought  in  his  sharp,  boyish  judgment;  he  could  not  under 
stand  why,  if  Ducey  disapproved  of  these  domestic  changes, 
he  allowed  them  and  compounded  with  the  sufferers  after 
this  feeble  fashion.  Nat  forgot  the  peace-at-any-price 
policy  that  often  controlled  his  own  relations  with  Mrs.  Anne. 
He  only  saw  that  Ducey  loved  his  wife,  petted  her,  gave  in 
to  her,  teased,  played  with,  and  spoiled  her,  as  no  man  should 
a  grown  sensible  woman  —  and  in  spite  of  all,  Nathan 
thought  the  gray  mare  was  the  better  horse.  The  boy, 
from  the  detachment  of  his  position,  saw  with  the  uncanny 
clearness  of  vision  belonging  to  his  years  that  there  was 
something  at  once  foolish  and  wrong-headed  in  William 
Ducey's  attitude  towards  his  wife.  Anne  had  enough  of 
character,  of  heart,  of  good  sound  sense;  she  need  not  be 
treated  like  a  child.  William  alternately  lavished  money 
on  her  and  complained  about  the  bills,  scolded  her,  made 
fun  of  her,  offered  her  amends  with  presents,  flowers,  gim- 
cracks,  bonbons,  toys  for  Georgie,  and  what-not.  By  turns 
he  was  master  in  his  own  house  and  slave;  whereas  Anne, 
at  least,  was  a  consistent  despot.  Her  mind  and  methods 
were  alike  direct;  she  had  her  way  by  force  and  arms,  with 


74  NATHAN   BURKE 

no  thought  of  evasion  or  compromise,  the  ordinary  feminine 
arts  being  entirely  unknown  to  her.  She  never  persuaded, 
she  commanded,  equally  tactless  and  truthful.  She  loved 
and  admired  her  husband  beyond  measure;  she  was  not  at 
all  vain,  but  she  delighted  in  being  pretty  for  his  sake,  and 
would  spend  hours  dressing  her  hair,  or  prinking  before  her 
mirror,  to  please  him.  All  her  tyranny  was  exerted  solely 
to  make  his  home  comfortable  and  happy;  she  had  a  spirit 
so  willing,  so  gay,  so  generous,  and  lovable  it  was  a  shame 
to  make  a  baby  of  her.  But  fifteen  years  of  married  life  had 
accomplished  that  end  as  nearly  as  possible  with  a  character 
intrinsically  so  strong  as  Mrs.  Ducey's;  and  Nathan  him 
self  joined  in  the  conspiracy. 

William  Ducey  at  this  time  was  a  tall,  slender,  rather 
Byronic-looking  gentleman,  extremely  pale  or  sallow,  with 
a  kind  of  melancholy  distinction  about  him,  which,  in  spite 
of  his  wife's  fond  pride,  was,  as  it  were,  quite  without  founda 
tion.  Yes,  appearances  and  Mrs.  Ducey  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding,  William  was  a  very  everyday  mortal  of 
an  amiable,  easy-going  disposition,  upright  and  kind-hearted 
and  without  especial  talents  in  any  direction.  He  had 
thick,  black,  and  shining  hair  which  he  was  exceedingly  par 
ticular  about  keeping  well  oiled  and  in  a  great  state  of  curl ; 
a  neat  and  I  daresay  tolerably  expensive  taste  in  waist 
coats;  and  a  perfectly  unromantic  wholesale-grocery  business 
downtown.  WILLIAM  DUCEY  &  Co.  flourished  in  gilt  letters 
above  the  door:  and,  at  short  intervals,  there  appeared  in 
the  Journal,  according  to  the  naive  custom  of  our  day, 
advertisements  of  "  goods  now  unloading  and  for  sale,"  or 
"rec'd  per  late  arrivals: 

50  Drums  Codfish: 
20  Tierces  Rice: 
.     13  Casks  Winter  Sperm  Oil: 
100  Bbls.  Molasses: 
80  Bags  Pimento: 
60  Bales  Sisal  Hemp: 
12  Boxes  Assorted  Fruits : 
5     do;        do;       Havana  Sweetmeats,"  etc. 

In  the  course  of  time  Nathan,  journeying  thither  almost 
daily  on  the  household  errands,  became  pretty  intimate  in 


RES   ANGUSTA   DOMI  75 

this  establishment.  A  staff  of  active  young  clerks,  some 
of  them  no  older  than  himself,  officiated  amongst  the  spices, 
sugars,  and  sacks  of  coffee,  the  Sisal  Hemp,  and  all  the  rest 
of  it.  Mr.  Ducey  presided  in  a  grimy  little  office,  divided 
off  at  the  rear  of  the  long  warehouse  by  a  high  wooden  par 
tition  with  panes  of  window-glass  let  into  the  upper  third  of 
it  for  extra  light.  But  did  Mr.  Ducey  preside  ?  There  he 
always  sat  enthroned  at  his  desk  in  a  majestic  pose  of  busi 
ness  absorption,  surrounded  by  bill-files  and  heaped  papers; 
but  Nat  had  a  suspicion  strengthened  by  the  nods,  winks, 
grins,  and  obscure  jokes  of  the  shirt-sleeved  brigade  in  front 
that  this  section  of  the  premises  was  really  the  den  and 
stronghold  of  Co.  —  Co.,  who  sported  a  mangy  old  brown 
beaver  hat  and  an  old  blue  broadcloth  tail-coat,  white  at  all 
the  seams,  with  the  brass  edges  of  its  huge  buttons  cutting 
through  the  stuff  that  covered  them;  Co.,  who  was  not  at 
all  fastidious  about  his  bristling  stiff  white  hair,  whose 
striped  satinet  waistcoat  was  furrowed  with  trenches  filled 
with  powdered  tobacco,  who  went  like  as  not  with  the  straps 
burst  under  his  soiled  old  cassimere  breeches,  and  trailing 
about  his  instep;  Co.,  who  got  down  an  hour  earlier  than 
anybody  else  in  the  morning,  and  stayed  to  see  the  shutters 
up  at  night;  who  looked  over  the  balance-sheet  every  month, 
every  week,  every  day  for  what  I  know,  cursing  and  growl 
ing  and  whistling  under  his  breath ;  who  knew  the  name  and 
amount  of  sales  of  every  clerk  in  the  place;  whose  little 
sharp  old  eyes  beneath  their  heavy  brows  missed  nothing  that 
went  on  from  the  top  floor  to  the  cellar  —  Co.,  who,  in  short, 
was  known  outside  these  precincts  and  to  society  at  large 
by  the  style  and  title  of  Mr.  George  Marsh.  Any  hour  of  the 
day  you  might  hear  him  behind  his  fastnesses,  expounding 
some  point  of  trade  in  his  coarse,  strong,  deliberate  voice 
from  which  fifty  years  of  America  had  eliminated  every 
trace  of  British  accent  or  pronunciation,  to  a  customer, 
perhaps  even  to  Ducey  himself.  It  was  not  a  pleasant  voice, 
nor  was  his  at  all  a  pleasing  personality,  but  the  sound  and 
presence  of  this  old  man  inspired  confidence  and  a  certain 
enthusiasm  of  industry;  if  those  young  clerks  feared  him, 
they  also  liked  him;  they  respected  his  power,  his  success. 
They  all  knew  or  suspected  that  Marsh's  money  had  founded 
and  was  backing  DUCEY  &  Co.,  though  upon  what  terms, 


76  NATHAN   BURKE 

they  could,  of  course,  only  guess.  The  head  book-keeper 
used  to  deliver  himself  quite  freely  to  Nathan  in  moments 
of  privacy  when  Ducey  had  gone  home  to  dinner  and  Co. 
had  repaired  to  his  midday  meal  at  the  Erin-go-Bragh 
coffee-house,  up  High  Street  a  little  way,  and  just  across 
from  the  Court-house. 

"  Yah!  Ducey!  Why,  he  don't  amount  to  a  hill  o'  beans," 
this  devoted  servitor  would  remark,  tilting  his  chair  to  the 
rear  legs,  and  propping  his  heels  on  Ducey's  august  desk; 
"  Marsh  is  the  backbone  of  this  business  and  I  do  the  figger- 
ing  —  that  don't  leave  much  room  for  Ducey,  I  guess. 
Where  does  he  come  in,  hey  ?  When  one  of  your  farmer 
friends  comes  in  for  a  trade,  who  does  the  talking  ?  Ducey  ? 
Not  by  a  long  shot,  he  don't.  It's  Marsh.  When  he  wants 
to  know  anything,  who  does  he  ask  ?  Ducey  ?  No,  sirr-ee. 
He  turns  to  me  and  says:  ' Quilldriver,  what  price  did  we 
make  Laughlin  Bros,  on  that  last  lot  o'  mess  pork  —  seventy 
barrels,  wasn't  it  ?'  You  bet  he  knows,  too.  He's  got  it 
figgered  down  to  a  jay-bird's  toe.  If  I  ever  start  in  business 
for  myself  - 

And  so  on,  and  so  forth,  thus  Mr.  Quilldriver  —  not  his 
name,  by  the  way,  but  in  truth  I  cannot  remember  it,  and 
have  only  in  mind  a  vivid  picture  of  this  sprightly  young 
gentleman  and  most  expert  accountant,  with  a  pen  behind 
his  ear,  cleaning  his  nails  at  leisure  with  a  pearl-handled 
knife  the  while  he  holds  agreeable  converse  with  Nat  Burke, 
who  perhaps  has  come  for  a  portion  of  those  "5  do;  do; 
Havana  Sweetmeats"  and  is  waiting  for  it  to  be  weighed 
and  tied  up.  "Course  you  don't  want  to  go  blatting  this  all 
over  town,"  says  the  book-keeper,  warningly;  "but  you 
ain't  much  on  the  talk,  Nat,  and  that's  the  reason  I'm  tell 
ing  you  —  I  wouldn't  talk  like  this  to  everybody  and  any 
body,  understand?"  Wouldn't  you,  oh,  reticent  Mr.  Quill 
driver  ?  Nat  was  one  of  the  somewhat  taciturn  people  in 
whom,  whether  he  will  or  no,  everybody  confides ;  I  should 
not  care  to  record  all  the  hopes,  fears,  plans,  complaints, 
protestations  to  which  he  has  listened  in  his  time.  Some  feel 
ing  of  loyalty  withheld  him  from  airing  his  own  views  about 
his  employers  to  the  others  ;  but  he  could  not  close  his  ears  to 
theirs;  the  young  fellows  would  talk,  and  after  all  they  told 
him  nothing  but  what  he  knew  or  had  guessed  already. 


RES   ANGUSTA   DOMI  77 

Mr.  Ducey,  in  the  lofty  abstraction  of  his  affairs,  rarely 
noticed  Nat's  visits  to  the  store  and  requisitions  of  soap, 
tea,  starch,  sugar,  the  hundred-and-one  items  Mrs.  Ducey 
was  constantly  needing;  but  old  George,  for  whom  no  detail 
of  the  business  was  too  insignificant,  speedily  observed  him, 
and,  metaphorically  speaking,  jotted  him  down  in  some 
mental  memorandum  for  future  reference.  "Is  that  the 
Burke  boy?"  he  would  bawl  out  from  the  back  of  the  store, 
where,  in  the  intervals  of  his  activity,  he  would  be  sprawled 
in  an  ancient  split-bottomed  arm-chair,  reading  a  trade 
journal,  or  making  calculations  with  a  scrap  of  paper  and  a 
pencil-stub  on  the  back  of  his  greasy  pocket-book.  There 
was  absolutely  no  need  for  the  old  man's  industry  and  appli 
cation;  he  had  reached  an  age  when  most  men  would  have 
been  content  to  take  their  ease  with  so  large  a  fortune  as  he 
had  amassed.  But  work  was  the  breath  of  his  nostrils;  to 
match  his  wits  and  will  against  those  of  other  men  his  only 
recreation.  You  may  see  many  such  in  the  American  busi 
ness  world;  and  there  is  something  not  far  from  pathetic 
in  the  spectacle  of  our  commercial  veterans  spirited  in  har 
ness  to  the  end,  so  gallant  in  work,  so  touchingly  helpless 
and  awkward  in  play.  By  way  of  taking  his  one  and  only 
relaxation,  old  George,  when  trade  was  dull,  would  sometimes 
come  out  from  his  sanctum  and  move  about  freely  among 
the  attentive  clerks  with  whom  he  would  be  quite  jocose 
and  familiar  —  and  you  may  be  sure  they  listened  deferen 
tially  and  guffawed  at  all  his  jokes,  which  were  frequently 
pretty  high  flavored.  Nathan,  to  whom  Mr.  Marsh  had 
spoken  directly  only  three  or  four  times  since  the  boy  first 
saw  him,  was  not  aware  of  having  attracted  his  attention 
at  all,  until  the  old  man  stopped  in  front  of  him  one  day  as 
he  waited  on  his  errand,  and  remarked  with  a  grin :  — 

"You're  the  boy,  I  understand,  who  never  says  anything 
but  'yes'm'  and  'no'm. ;  Young  man,  haven't  you  got  any 
better  manners  than  that?  Don't  you  ever  talk  any?" 

"Not  unless  I've  got  something  to  say/'  said  Nat,  a  little 
surprised. 

The  other  looked  at  him  with  some  interest,  and  turned 
his  quid,  staring  meditatively. 

"That's  right,  son,  stick  to  that,"  he  said  at  last,  nodding. 
"  Let  the  other  fellow  do  the  talking  —  if  he  keeps  it  up  for 


78  NATHAN   BURKE 

half  an  hour,  he'll  tell  you  what  sort  of  man  he  is.  How  old 
are  you?" 

"I'll  be  seventeen  the  first  of  the  year/7  Nathan  told  him. 

"You  look  older.  Pretty  near  got  your  growth,  I  guess. 
What's  that  you've  got?" 

"It's  five  pounds  of  Rio  Mrs.  Ducey  wanted,"  said  Nat, 
preparing  to  depart. 

"I  don't  mean  that  —  I  mean  that  book  in  your  side 
pocket.  Give  it  here,"  said  the  old  man,  bending  a  sharp 
glance  on  him  from  under  his  shelving  brows. 

"It's  a  school-book  —  a  grammar,"  said  the  boy,  flushing 
a  little,  but  meeting  the  other's  eye  as  he  handed  over  the 
volume.  It  had  been  knocking  about  in  his  pocket,  so  that 
he  might  have  it  handy  for  reading  at  odd  times,  yet  was 
fairly  clean  and  well  kept,  for  Nat  had  a  certain  reverence 
for  books,  and  besides  had  this  not  cost  a  dollar  and  a  half 
of  his  monthly  wage  at  Riley's  Book-store  some  three  weeks 
previously?  Old  Marsh  grunted,  "Huh!"  took  the  gram 
mar,  which  was  one  of  Mr.  Murray's,  if  I  recollect  aright,  and 
ran  a  swift  eye  over  it.  He  returned  it  with  the  natural 
question :  — 

"Ever  gone  to  school  any?" 

"A  little  when  I  was  a  boy  —  when  I  was  a  little  fellow, 
I  mean,"  Nat  added,  smiling  himself  as  he  detected  a  mo 
mentary  twinkle  in  Mr.  Marsh's  deep-set  eyes.  "There 
wan't  —  there  wasn't  any  district-school  near  enough  for 
us  to  go  to  regular  —  regularly,  I  mean." 

"Can  you  figger  any?" 

"Not  much  good  at  it,"  said  Nathan,  taking  up  his  pack 
age  of  coffee;  and  old  Mr.  Marsh  finally  allowed  him  to  go. 
The  boy  knew  that  his  slight  affairs  would  not  occupy  the 
other's  mind  for  long.  George  Marsh  had  no  time  to  waste 
on  his  niece's  hired  man;  still  he  felt  some  anxiety  lest  the 
old  gentleman  should  casually  mention  this  occurrence  to 
Mrs.  Ducey,  and  devoutly  hoped  he  would  forget  all  about 
it.  Nat  knew  instinctively  that  that  lady  would  consider 
books  or  any  kind  of  book-learning  the  last  thing  in  the  world 
with  which  her  chore-boy  should  meddle.  Murray's  Gram 
mar,  indeed!  And  why  wasn't  he  digging  the  potatoes, 
pray  tell  ?  What  would  she  say  to  Nat's  slender  battery  of 
knowledge  ranged  on  the  little  shelf  of  his  stable  room,  to 


RES    ANGUSTA   DOMI  79 

the  blurred  copy-books  over  which  he  toiled  by  candle-light, 
perspiring  in  the  hot  summer  nights,  surrounded  by  a  halo 
of  gnats  and  moth  millers  ?  From  the  summit  of  my  years 
I  look  down  upon  him  with  mingled  sympathy  and  amuse 
ment.  He  labors  at  his  pot-hooks  and  capital-letters  with 
the  aid  of  an  unsteady  little  deal  table  not  large  enough  to 
accommodate  the  ink-bottle  and  his  elbows  at  the  same  time. 
The  bottle  must  be  perilously  balanced  on  the  corner  of  the 
bed,  and  to  this  day  he  will  reach  and  dip  the  pen  with 
a  wary  hand,  so  firmly  was  that  habit  established.  Once 
(horror!)  Mr.  Burke  upset  it  all  over  the  clean  patchwork 
counterpane;  a  benevolent  cook,  understanding  his  fears, 
washed  the  stain  out  for  him  by  stealth  —  may  her  reward 
be  great!  That  there  is  no  royal  road  to  learning  Nathan 
could  testify  by  hard  experience ;  it  was  bestrewn  —  in  his 
case  —  with  the  gory  remains  of  dead  mosquitoes  and  other 
night-flying  gentry,  for  one  thing.  Yet  once  his  desire  was 
aroused  it  was  in  his  nature  to  persevere;  and  there  is  this 
much  to  say  for  these  late  beginners  that  with  ordinary  gifts 
they  will  learn  more  thoroughly  and  apply  what  they  learn 
with  far  greater  readiness  and  accuracy  than  children  of  the 
usual  age  put  down  to  study  the  same  lesson.  Almost  all 
the  knowledge  we  acquire  before  fourteen  years  or  so  is 
purely  a  mechanical  accomplishment  —  a  sort  of  feat  of 
memory  and  nothing  more.  No  one  would  advocate  putting 
off  a  child's  schooling  until  he  reaches  that  age,  but  Nathan's 
experience  is  a  living  proof  that  the  lost  years  need  not  be  a 
serious  drawback.  There  was  nothing  of  the  genius  about 
him;  he  mastered  the  art  of  reading,  naturally,  with  greater 
facility  than  the  other  branches,  and  I  remember  that  his 
main  struggle  was  with  the  temptation  to  do  nothing  but 
read  to  the  utter  neglect  of  penmanship,  arithmetic,  and 
geography.  Even  this  taste,  however,  turned  to  his  advan 
tage,  for  he  was  not  long  in  discovering  that  history  which 
wears  so  solemn  and  forbidding  a  face  upon  the  first  ac 
quaintance  is  in  reality  full  of  interest,  action,  stirring,  and 
dramatic  adventure;  and  gave  himself  up  to  that  variety  of 
reading  thenceforward  with  a  quiet  conscience,  although,  in 
deed  Plutarch  and  Gibbon  soon  lost  whatever  charm  of  novelty 
they  had  for  him;  he  was  obliged  to  go  over  his  books  more 
than  once,  not  being  able  to  buy  many.  These  solid  works 


80  NATHAN   BURKE 

recalled  to  his  mind  for  years  thereafter  not  alone  the  glory 
that  was  Greece  and  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome,  but  the 
companionable  odor  of  hay  and  harness-oil  from  the  loft 
adjoining,  and  the  horses  stamping  beneath  him. 

The  young  man  was  right  in  his  estimate  of  Mrs.  Ducey's 
opinions,  as  he  found  out  shortly  after  that  interview  with 
her  uncle.  For,  being  engaged  in  cutting  the  grass  one  after 
noon,  and  pausing  to  whet  his  scythe,  the  gate  clicked,  and 
as  he  looked  that  way  he  beheld  Mrs.  Ducey  entering  and 
coming  towards  him  with  her  usual  brisk  and  alert  bearing, 
beginning  to  speak  —  as  was  her  habit  —  before  she  was 
well  within  hearing.  She  had  been  making  visits,  I  dare 
say;  her  fresh,  fashionable  skirts  trailed  crisply  about  her  — 
barege,  popeline  brochee,  poult  de  soie  —  how  do  I  know  what 
they  were  ?  These  things  are  beyond  the  power  of  man.  Solo 
mon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  a  well-dressed  lady 
of  Nat  Burke's  young  days ;  that  respectable  old  Hebrew 
potentate  would  have  made  but  a  poor  showing  beside 
Mrs.  Ducey,  whose  appearance  unfailingly  commanded  all 
Nathan's  admiration.  She  was  so  daintily  rich  and  bril 
liant;  rare  flowers  bloomed  on  her  bonnets;  she  had  all 
kinds  of  scarfs,  veils,  fringes,  beads,  and  glittering  trinkets. 
On  this  occasion  she  may  have  been  wearing,  for  all  I  know, 
une  robe  redingote,  faced  with  velours  epingle,  ornamented 
with  bouillonnees,  or  Brandebourgs,  or  cocardes  en  choux  — 
not  that  I  have  any  idea  what  these  decorations  were. 
Heaven  forbid  !  The  above  morsel  of  description  had  come 
under  Nat's  eye  in  the  back  of  an  odd  number  of  The  Lady's 
World  of  Fashion,  with  a  group  of  simpering,  delicately 
tinted  sylphs  on  the  opposite  page  in  illustration,  and  being 
in  a  tongue  not  understanded  of  the  people  had  puzzled  him 
not  a  little.  There  has  always  been  something  very  impos 
ing  to  Mr.  Burke  in  the  spectacle  of  lovely  woman  thus 
attired;  he  stands  tongue-tied  in  the  Presence.  And  so  he 
stood  now,  until  Mrs.  Ducey,  with  a  young  lady  equally 
notable  of  aspect  floating  in  her  wake,  had  reached  him. 

"  Nathan,  I  want  you  to  be  careful  when  you  cut  around 
the  flower-beds.  You  oughtn't  to  have  begun  when  I  wasn't 
here  to  tell  you  —  I've  told  you  that  before.  Mr.  Ducey 
doesn't  like  for  you  to  disobey  me,  Nathan;  I'm  surprised 
at  you — " 


RES   ANGUSTA   DOMI  81 

"Mrs.  Marsh  has  been  watching  me  —  she's  up  yonder 
on  the  porch,"  said  Nat,  indicating  the  elder  lady,  who,  in 
fact,  had  been  superintending  him  vigilantly  all  afternoon. 
"I  guess  I  couldn't  go  very  far  wrong  with  your  mother 
looking  on,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  said  Nat,  soberly. 

"  H'm !  Mr.  Ducey  would  be  very  angry  if  he  knew  you  had 
disobeyed  me,  Nathan;  you're  not  to  do  it  again.  Is  that 
your  coat  on  the  bush?  Don't  hang  it  on  that  syringa;  it 
will  break  it  down,  it's  so  heavy  —  and  with  that  great  big 
book  in  the  pocket,  too.  Lay  it  on  the  ground  somewhere. 
Is  that  one  of  your  books,  Nathan?  What  do  you  want 
with  it?" 

"I  want  it  to  read,  ma'am,"  said  Nat,  feeling,  to  his  vexa 
tion,  the  blood  rise  in  his  face.  "She  oughtn't  to  talk  to  me 
that  way  before  —  before  that  young  lady  —  before  people/' 
he  thought. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  remember  now,  I  heard  about  your  reading. 
Now  don't  begin  and  neglect  your  work,  just  to  read, 
Nathan.  And  don't  read  that  way  in  your  room  at  night. 
I'm  afraid  you'll  set  the  stable  on  fire  with  your  candle  — 

"I  haven't  set  it  on  fire  with  the  lantern  yet,"  Nat  re 
minded  her. 

"You  mustn't  answer  me  back,  Nathan,"  said  Mrs. 
Ducey,  very  gently  and  kindly;  "that  isn't  nice,  you  know. 
You'll  be  sure  to  go  to  sleep  and  set  the  stable  on  fire  with 
your  candle  —  it's  very  dangerous  —  of  course  you're  just 
a  young  boy  and  you  don't  think  of  these  things.  You  can 
take  your  book  and  go  somewhere  on  Sundays  when  we 
aren't  driving  out,  or  when  you  have  a  holiday,  but  you 
mustn't  dawdle  around  reading  other  times.  Mr.  Ducey 
wouldn't  like  it.  I'm  coming,  Ma,  I'm  coming.  I've  got 
Mary  with  me,  she's  going  to  stay  to  tea.  What  ?  Why,  I 
said  Mary  —  Mary  Sharpless,  you  know.  I  made  her  come 
home  with  me.  Now  mind  what  I  said,  Nathan.  Mr.  Ducey 
wouldn't  like  it  if  he  knew  you  had  been  idle.  Come  along, 
Mary." 

She  was  halfway  to  the  porch  already  with  the  words, 
moving  with  her  swift  step  that  was  yet  so  sure  and  graceful, 
like  all  her  motions;  nobody  ever  saw  Mrs.  Ducey  stumble. 
Her  clear  incisive  voice  carried  to  the  house  and  street  with 
equal  distinctness,  and  it  seemed  to  Nathan  as  if  the  entire 


82  NATHAN   BURKE 

neighborhood  were  being  advertised  of  the  fact  that  Ducey's 
hired  man  was  loafing  away  his  time.  It  was  not  true,  and 
the  young  fellow's  face  burned  under  his  tan.  He  turned  his 
eyes  from  Mrs.  Ducey's  retreating  back,  and  to  his  surprise 
encountered  those  of  her  visitor  fixed  on  him.  The  young 
lady  had  not  moved  to  follow  her  hostess ;  she  was  a  young 
lady  of  a  charming,  straight,  light,  and  slender  figure;  her 
black  hair  was  modishly  arranged  in  complicated  loops  and 
braids,  smooth  and  glossy,  as  if  carved  in  jet;  those  eyes 
which  Nat  looked  down  into  were  not  black,  however,  but 
very  large,  soft,  and  gray,  oddly  encircled  by  long  heavy 
black  lashes.  She  smiled  up  at  him  to  his  thrilled  bewilder 
ment. 

"  Weren't  you  whetting  your  scythe  just  now  ?  "  (This  was 
the  profoundly  original  [remark  she  addressed  to  him.)  "I 
think  that's  the  most  skilful  thing  —  I  often  wonder  how 
men  do  it.  You  move  the  whetstone  so  quick!" 

"It's  —  it's  —  it  ain't  hard  —  it's  easy  when  you  know 
how/'  stammered  Nathan.  He  rested  one  hand  on  the  top 
of  the  blade  and  manoeuvred  the  stone  with  the  other  in  a 
burst  of  lightning  speed.  Miss  Mary  Sharpless  stood  in 
rapt  admiration. 

"Let  me  try/'  she  said  enthusiastically,  seizing  the  tool 
with  her  small,  elegant  hands.  Nat  was  still  holding  it,  but 
she  let  it  go  promptly  with  a  little  cry.  "Oh,  mercy,  isn't 
it  heavy  ?  However  can  you  hold  it  ?  How  strong  you 
must  be !" 

"This  scythe?  Why,  it's  light,"  said  the  boy,  handling  it 
with  elaborate  ease. 

"  Mary,  Mary,  aren't  you  coming  ?  Ma  wants  to  see  you," 
Mrs.  Ducey  called  from  the  porch,  and  Miss  Sharpless  gave 
Nat  another  glance  out  of  her  odd  and  beautiful  eyes,  and 
walked  away. 

Nathan  so  far  obeyed  Mrs.  Ducey's  injunctions  as  to 
neglect  Webster  and  fractions  for  that  one  night  at  any  rate; 
and  instead  of  applying  himself,  as  heretofore,  to  those  musty 
pursuits  he  mooned  about  the  remote  corners  of  the  yard 
with  a  pipe,  gradually  edging  nearer  the  house  from  a  point 
whence  his  tobacco-smoke  would  drift  off  down  the  wind, 
such  was  the  craft  which  he  had  suddenly  developed.  He 
saw  Mr.  Ducey  escorting  the  guest  back  to  her  home  at  an 


RES   ANGUSTA   DOMI  83 

appropriate  hour;  and  being  by  this  time  near  enough  to 
hear  the  two  other  ladies  on  the  porch,  got  what  he  deserved, 
the  usual  listeners'  wage. 

"Well,  Ma,  Will  can  talk  all  he  pleases,  /  don't  want  any 
literary  chore-boys.  Of  course  it's  all  right  for  them  to  know 
how  to  read  and  write  —  everybody  ought  to  know  how  to 
do  that.  But  I  think  it's  perfectly  absurd  —  all  this  talk  about 
uplifting  and  educating  that  class.  They  aren't  fitted  for 
it,  and  you  just  unfit  them  for  their  own  people  and  don't  make 
them  good  enough  for  ours.  It  fills  their  heads  full  of  ideas, 
and  makes  them  unhappy  and  useless.  Why,  just  look  at 
the  darkies  at  home;  they  can't  even  read  and  write,  and 
they're  as  happy  as  the  day  is  long  —  that  just  shows.  I 
believe  in  people  staying  where  the  Lord  put  them  to  begin 
with,  and  not  trying  to  be  what  He  never  meant  them  to  be. 
It's  a  great  pity  Nathan's  got  this  crazy  notion  of  reading; 
he'll  get  to  be  perfectly  worthless  before  long." 

Young  Burke,  in  the  darkness,  uttered  a  distressingly 
profane  ejaculation;  it  was  the  strongest  in  his  vocabulary, 
and  alas!  I  fear  poor  Nat's  boyish  ears  had  heard  much 
more  than  was  good  for  them  in  those  honest,  hearty,  coarse 
old  days.  Mrs.  Ducey  would  have  run  away  screaming 
with  her  hands  to  her  face,  she  would  have  wildly  refused  to 
have  him  around  another  minute,  if  she  could  have  seen  and 
heard  her  hired  man  at  this  juncture.  Worthless  I  The 
words  were  not  intended  for  his  ears,  but  even  if  Mrs.  Ducey 
had  known  he  was  within  hearing,  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether 
she  would  have  moderated  her  voice.  Come  away,  my 
friends,  the  young  gentleman  is  not  a  handsome  object  as 
he  stands  there  grinding  his  teeth  and  cursing  in  the  dark. 
Let  us  leave  him  to  his  frightful  schemes  of  giving  notice 
the  very  next  day,  of  getting  another  job  at  the  foundry, 
on  an  Allegheny  freight-wagon,  a  coach,  a  canal-boat,  any 
thing  where  people  will  treat  him  like  a  man.  By  to-mor 
row  morning  he  will  have  come  out  of  his  temper,  he  will 
think  of  it  with  ironic  mirth.  And  when  Nora  whirls  out 
of  the  dining-room,  weeping  tears  of  rage  all  over  the  platter 
of  breakfast-bacon  and  vowing  she  won't  stay  here  and  be 
talked  to  like  that,  there,  Nathan  will  endeavor  to  soothe 
her  with  words  of  reason.  For  ourselves,  had  we  not  better 


84  NATHAN   BURKE 

join  Mrs.  Marsh  and  Mrs.  Ducey  on  the  porch?  We  may 
be  just  in  time  to  hear  another  speech  which  Nat  caught  as 
he  was  striding  away  in  a  fume  to  his  poor  defamed  books; 
it  brought  him  up  short,  angry  as  he  was. 

"Mary  Sharpless?"  said  Mrs.  Ducey;  and  in  answer  to 
something  inaudible  from  her  mother,  "Oh,  yes,  she  hasn't 
changed  a  bit,  and  never  will,  if  she  lives  to  be  a  hundred. 
Didn't  you  see  her  actually  making  eyes  at  Nathan  this 
afternoon?  Mary  can't  help  it;  she  just  can't  pass  by  any 
thing  in  trousers." 


CHAPTER  VII 

IN  WHICH  IS  CONTINUED  THE  CHRONICLE  OP  SMALL  BEER 

DURING  Mr.  Burke's  term  of  office  the  Ducey  house  per 
petually  overflowed  with  visitors;  they  came  from  New 
Orleans,  from  Natchez,  from  a  dozen  cities  and  plantations 
scattered  up  and  down  the  Southern  States.  These  troops 
of  guests  generally  arrived  to  spend  the  summer  months; 
in  the  evenings  the  Ducey  front-steps  bloomed  with  lovely 
young  ladies  in  flowing  white  skirts  and  twinkling  necklaces, 
with  dazzling  white  arms  and  the  most  bewitching  little  feet 
in  tiny  satin  slippers.  All  the  young  men  in  town  would 
congregate  there;  there  was  a  prodigious  consumption  of 
lemonade  and  cakes  and  ices;  the  elegant  square  rosewood 
piano  in  the  parlor  would  be  opened,  and  two  or  three  of  the 
nymphs  would  execute  thereon  various  tinkling  and  trip 
ping  pieces  of  music  entitled  " Showers  of  Pearls,"  "  Roses 
and  Dewdrops,"  and  so  on.  Some  of  them  could  sing,  "Isle 
of  Beauty,  fare  thee  well,"  "Oh,  why  hast  thou  taught  me 
to  love  thee?"  "True  love  can  ne'er  forget,"  and  other  of 
the  sentimental  ballads  then  in  vogue.  They  were  so  sen 
timental  that  the  Duceys'  hired  man  invariably  beat  a 
retreat  whenever  he  chanced  to  stray  within  the  zone  of 
melody;  he  had  not  much  ear  for  music,  as  has  been  hinted, 
and  all  this  talk  about  breaking  hearts  and  gushing  tears  and 
golden  lutes  and  sighs  and  smiles  and  kisses  struck  him  as 
lackadaisical  bosh ;  it  made  him  ashamed  —  by  Heavens, 
it  makes  him  ashamed  now !  Even  the  picture  which  he 
sometimes  glimpsed  through  the  open  windows  of  —  shall 
we  say  ?  — :  Miss  Sharpless,  a  wreath  of  pale  artificial  flowers 
drooping  delicately  among  her  black  braids  and  a  low- 
necked,  wide-spreading  filmy  muslin  encompassing  her  trim 
figure,  with  her  hands  scampering  up  and  down  the  keys 
in  the  accompaniment  of  another  similarly  attired  virgin  — 
even  this  tableau,  which  would  have  moved  him  ordinarily 
with  an  aesthetic  delight,  could  not  reconcile  him  to  the 

85 


86  NATHAN    BURKE 

melancholy  foolishness  of  those  songs.  He  did  not  see  Mary 
thus  occupied  very  often;  she  came  to  the  house  infrequently, 
and  Nat,  with  a  dumb  amazement,  overheard  Mrs.  Ducey 
explaining  to  some  intimate  female  caller  that  Mary  Sharp- 
less  was  really  a  little  too  old  for  these  girls.  The  young  men 
did  not  seem  to  think  so,  but  young  men  are  notoriously  bad 
judges.  There  was  never  wanting  one  of  them  to  bring  her 
to  the  house  of  an  evening,  to  take  her  home,  to  hang  over 
the  piano  while  she  performed  astounding  trills  and  varia 
tions  on  that  reliable  instrument.  These  young  bucks  were 
elaborately  brushed,  scented,  and  oiled;  each  one  wore  a 
curling  lock  of  hair  disposed  carefully  in  the  middle  of  his 
forehead,  and  the  rest  of  it  waving  down  over  his  high  velvet 
coat-collar,  glossy,  ambrosial !  A  single  jewelled  button 
glimmered  from  the  midst  of  his  shirt-front;  he  had  glorious 
plaided,  brocaded,  ringed,  striped,  and  streaked  waistcoats 
of  sumptuous  materials,  seal-rings  to  decorate  his  fingers, 
slender,  natty  rattan  canes,  kid  gloves  of  tender  lavender 
and  canary  hues.  Where  are  they  gone,  birds  of  bright 
plumage  ?  Meminisse  juvabit !  Nathan  Burke  —  who  had 
neither  part  nor  lot  with  them  —  cannot  but  recall  them 
with  tenderness.  He  used  to  look  on  from  afar  without 
envy;  he  enjoyed  the  double  privilege  of  a  certain  intimacy 
with  these  gilded  youths  among  the  warehouses  and  offices 
down  town,  where  their  appearance  was  by  no  means  so 
gilded,  and  of  beholding  the  angels  of  the  piazza  and  draw 
ing-room  at  tolerably  close  range  in  the  earlier  hours  of  the 
day,  when,  to  tell  the  truth,  their  attire  and  manners  were 
not  always  nearly  so  angelic. 

Besides  these,  there  were  whole  flocks  of  chirruping  young 
sters;  Nat  hardly  knew  them  apart,  although  he  was  con 
stantly  being  called  upon  to  take  them  out  riding  by  the 
phaeton-load  at  once  in  bouquets  of  babies,  to  separate  the 
little  boys  when  they  fought,  to  rescue  the  little  girls  from 
the  advances  of  inquiring  ganders  and  turkey-gobblers.  Their 
mothers  were  forever  running  with  screams  to  pluck  them 
out  of  the  hot  sunshine  like  brands  from  the  burning;  if 
Nathan  had  carried  out  all  the  anxious  orders  he  received  to 
keep  them  away  from  the  stable,  the  beehives,  the  well, 
the  grindstone,  he  would  have  done  nothing  else.  But  in 
fact  he  never  meddled  with  them  unless  he  saw  that  they 


THE  CHRONICLE  OF  SMALL  BEER     87 

had  ventured  into  some  position  of  real  risk,  and  then  they 
obeyed  him  with  signal  alacrity.  "  We  were  all  afraid  of  you, 
Nat,"  one  of  them  told  him  long  afterwards;  "we  were  afraid 
of  you,  you  were  so  long  and  lean  and  quick,  you  had  such 
a  thin,  hook  nose  and  such  sharp  blue  eyes.  I  saw  you  shoot 
a  hawk  once  that  had  swooped  down  and  snatched  up  a 
chicken.  You  did  it  with  your  rifle,  and  the  hawk  fell  down 
dead  in  the  middle  of  the  yard,  shot  through  its  murderous 
hawk  heart,  and  the  hen  wasn't  hurt  after  all.  You  skinned 
the  hawk  and  nailed  the  skin  up,  spread  eagle  fashion  on  the 
barn-door,  do  you  remember  ?  Afterwards  we  children  used 
to  pretend  that  you  came  down  every  night  and  wrapped 
up  in  the  skin  and  feathers  and  went  sailing  —  sailing  — 
through  the  sky  like  a  hawk  yourself.  Some  of  us  half  be 
lieved  it.  The  darky  nurses  at  home  had  filled  us  full  of 
spooks  and  bogies  and  savage  fancies.  How  long  were  you 
here  ?  A  year  ?  Two  years  ?  I  remember  when  we  came 
back  one  summer  there  was  another  hired  man,  and  you  were 
gone  and  the  hawkskin,  too.  Of  course  you  had  taken  it 
with  you  —  were- wolf  ! " 

Nathan  used  to  hear  the  maidservants  making  loud  moan 
about  the  extra  work  Mrs.  Ducey's  " company"  entailed; 
but  dissatisfaction  in  that  quarter  was  so  common  as  to  be 
scarcely  noticeable.  His  own  duties  were  not  much  heavier; 
the  children  minded  him,  and  he  looked  upon  them  with 
much  the  same  tolerance  as  upon  the  household  pets,  Fran- 
cie's  kittens,  or  George's  rabbits.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  small 
boys  to  follow  and  ape  a  big  boy,  so  that  when  the  little  fel 
lows  besieged  him  with  entreaties  to  let  them  "hitch  up" 
or  turn  the  grindstone,  to  take  them  swimming,  take  them 
fishing,  take  them  hunting,  Nat,  sympathizing  with  the 
universal  boyish  desires,  sometimes  complied  —  when  the 
mothers  would  hear  of  it.  Once,  towards  the  close  of  his 
second  year  with  the  Duceys,  he  even  took  Georgie  on  a 
shooting  expedition,  after  that  young  gentleman  had  pes 
tered  his  parents,  or  rather  his  mother,  into  giving  consent 
—  no  one  thought  of  asking  Nathan's.  To  do  him  justice 
it  was  not  often  that  George  sought  the  hired  man's  society, 
being,  it  is  more  than  likely,  in  the  frame  of  mind  of  Doctor 
Fell's  patient  who  did  not  fancy  that  eminent  practitioner: 
the  reason  why  he  could  not  tell,  but  'twas  a  thing  he  knew 


88  NATHAN    BURKE 

full  well.  George  was  older  than  most  of  the  other  chil 
dren  whom  he  played  with  or  teased  or  bullied,  proceedings 
not  unusual  among  boys,  but  he  had  few  friends  of  his  own 
age.  Francie  would  come  home  from  school  with  a  whole 
battalion  of  pantaletted  and  leghorn-bonneted  little  dames 
like  herself;  they  had  tea-parties  under  the  bushes  and 
played  house  in  the  harness-room,  when  Nathan  would  let 
them.  George  had  no  companions;  the  child  was  sickly, 
he  could  not  or  would  not  join  in  the  other  boys'  games 
and  enterprises.  His  mother  lauded  his  obedience;  but 
Nathan  had  a  fancy  that  George  singularly  lacked  the  spirit 
of  adventure.  It  was  impossible  to  imagine  him  sneaking 
off  to  go  in  swimming, or  skating,  or  playing  hookey  for  the 
sake  of  any  kind  of  sport.  These  pursuits  are  very  question 
able;  I  do  not  defend  them;  I  agree  entirely  with  the  out 
raged  ladies  who  will  clap  the  book  to  at  this  point,  loudly 
denouncing  its  author  for  a  corrupt  old  villain,  putting  ideas 
into  children's  heads.  I  repeat,  these  crimes  cannot  be  too 
severely  condemned  —  but  is  there  a  boy  on  this  turning 
globe  who  has  not  committed  them  ?  Georgie  was  an  exem 
plary  character;  he  would  never  rob  an  orchard  or  a  melon 
patch  in  the  world;  he  would  share  the  spoil,  but  that  he 
should  take  the  risk  was  inconceivable.  He  liked  very  much 
to  be  dressed  in  his  little  fine  white  ruffled  cambric  shirt  and 
linen  trousers,  which  he  always  kept  beautifully  clean,  and 
his  cap  with  the  shining  patent-leather  peak;  and  thus 
costumed  to  sit  on  the  front  seat  of  the  carriage  when  Mrs. 
Ducey  went  out  driving.  He  did  not  want  to  drive  himself, 
he  was  a  little  afraid  when  the  horses  shied  or  pranced;  but 
he  took  undisguised  pleasure  in  instructing  Nathan  in  the 
art  and  ordering  him  about  in  his  mother's  presence;  he 
never  attempted  it  elsewhere.  It  was  a  long  while  before  he 
could  ride  his  pony  without  an  evident  tremor;  but  the  little 
animal  being  well-broken  and  submissive,  Georgie  finally 
overcame  his  fears,  and  in  time  learned  to  manage  it  with 
some  degree  of  skill.  He  used  to  canter  back  and  forth  be 
fore  his  mother  and  as  large  an  audience  as  could  be  gathered 
on  the  front  porch,  sitting  up  very  straight,  with  his  cap 
cocked  ever  so  slightly  over  one  eye,  and  his  whip  and  elbows 
in  a  rakish,  jaunty,  dare-devil  attitude,  which  the  ladies 
greatly  admired.  " Isn't  it  wonderful  how  Georgie  rides?" 


THE   CHRONICLE   OF  SMALL   BEER  89 

Mrs.  Ducey  would  remark  to  them;  "it's  perfectly  natural 
to  him  —  he  just  picked  it  right  up.  He  doesn't  know  what 
fear  is.  I  think  I  never  saw  so  perfect  a  seat  on  a  horse,  did 
you?  And  you  ought  to  see  how  he  takes  care  of  his  ' horse/ 
as  he  calls  it.  Feeds  it  and  grooms  it  himself,  and  beds  it 
down  and  washes  its  back  —  simply  wonderful  for  a  young 
boy.  They  aren't  generally  so  patient  and  kind  to  animals, 
you  know."  Which  last  was  entirely  true  and  a  trait  of  the 
boy's  character  as  out  of  the  ordinary  as  some  of  his  other 
traits. 

Mrs.  Ducey,  once  having  acquiesced  in  the  hunting  plan, 
became  more  enthusiastic  than  the  boy  himself.  She  sat 
up  till  all  hours  of  the  night  working  over  a  little  shooting- 
jacket  for  him;  there  was  a  tremendous  outlay  for  boots, 
game-bags,  ammunition  —  one  would  have  thought  that 
Georgie,  who  had  never  fired  a  gun  in  his  life,  nor  seen  a  live 
quail,  and  who  knew  no  more  about  the  backwoods  than  he 
did  about  logarithms,  was  going  to  slay  his  thousands,  as, 
I  dare  say,  his  proud  and  devoted  mother  imagined  he  would. 
She  made  the  lad's  father  buy  him  a  gun,  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  one  quite  good  enough  for  the  purpose  could 
have  been  borrowed  in  fifty  houses  of  the  town,  for  almost 
everybody  owned  some  sort  of  firearms  in  those  days.  It 
was  a  beautiful  double-barrelled  English  fowling-piece,  a 
Manton,  that  Mr.  Ducey  bought,  and  Nat  eyed  it  longingly 
when  it  came  home  in  the  handsome  leather  case  provided 
for  it.  Georgie  enjoyed  flourishing  the  weapon  in  and  out 
of  this  case  and  marching  with  it  in  a  martial  pose  on  his 
shoulder  much  more  than  he  did  the  practical  details  of  its 
handling.  He  looked  on  indifferently  when  Nathan  showed 
him  how  to  clean  and  load  it,  and  when  the  latter  proposed 
to  set  up  a  target  in  an  open  field  near  Willson's  Grove  and 
give  him  a  little  practice,  shrank  visibly.  Nat  himself 
entertained  no  high-flown  expectations  of  the  delights  of  this 
trip.  "If  he  don't  shoot  me  or  the  dog  or  somebody's  cow, 
we'll  be  lucky,"  he  thought  with  humorous  resignation; 
and  exerted  himself  to  prevent  Mrs.  Ducey  from  buying  a 
thoroughbred  pointer  which  she  ardently  desired  to  do 
as  soon  as  she  heard  that  a  dog  was  more  or  less  necessary. 
"Why,  I  know  a  young  fellow  that's  got  a  yearling  setter-pup 
that  he'd  be  glad  to  have  me  take  out  and  break  for  him; 


90  NATHAN   BURKE 

Mrs.  Ducey,"  argued  Nathan;  " don't  you  think  it's  better 
to  let  Georgie  go  out  this  once  and  see  how  he  likes  it,  and  if 
he  does  like  it,  time  enough  to  buy  a  dog  then."  She  finally 
yielded,  not  to  Nat's  persuasions  —  indeed,  no!  —  but  upon 
finding  that  Georgie  also  did  not  warm  to  the  project  for 
some  reason.  He  eagerly  assented  to  everything  Nathan 
said,  followed  him  about,  and  was  laboriously  attentive  to 
him  these  days. 

"Ain't  you  going  to  take  any  gun?"  he  asked,  observing 
Nat's  exceedingly  simple  preparations;  "you  can't  use  mine, 
you  know.  That  is,  I'll  let  you  have  it  once  in  a  while,  but 
you  must  mind  and  be  careful  with  it.  You  ought  to  take 
your  own  gun  —  why  don't  you  ?" 

"It's  no  good  to  shoot  quail  with,"  Nathan  explained  to 
him.  "I'll  borrow  one  of  Jake  Darnell's,  I  guess  —  he's 
got  two  or  three.  No  use  lugging  mine  fifteen  miles  out  in 
the  country;  there  aren't  any  more  deer  around  there  to 
speak  of.  It's  been  clean  hunted  out." 

"What's  the  matter  with  your  gun  that  you  can't  shoot 
quail  with  it?"  demanded  Georgie,  suspiciously.  "I  ain't 
going  to  let  you  have  mine,  anyhow.  Mine  cost  two  hundred 
and  twenty-five  dollars.  How  much  did  yours  cost?" 

"Nothing,  I  guess.  It's  a  musket.  Belonged  to  my 
father.  He  got  it  off  a  British  soldier  up  North  —  at  the 
fight  at  Fort  Meigs.  Then  he  had  the  barrel  rifled  out. 
It's  a  pretty  fair  gun,"  said  Nat,  repeating  what  Darnell 
had  told  him,  for  he  could  not  remember  his  father.  He 
glanced  out  at  the  misty  November  sky,  thinking  how  well 
the  scent  must  lie  this  weather.  The  prospect  of  a  day  in 
the  open,  the  river,  the  wet  leaves  underfoot,  the  corn- 
shocks  all  arow,  the  sudden  whirr  and  uprush  of  the  birds, 
was  beginning  to  exhilarate  him,  spite  of  his  native  sober 
ness,  and  the  drawback  of  Georgie's  company.  They  started 
out  together  one  foggy  morning  not  long  afterwards,  Mrs. 
Ducey  pursuing  the  spring- wagon  to  the  road  with  injunc 
tions  not  to  let  Georgie  go  out  in  the  midday  sun  which 
was  never  good  for  him,  not  to  let  him  walk  in  the  damp 
woods  under  the  trees  ("You  can  shoot  just  as  well  from  the 
road,  you  know,  Nathan."),  not  to  allow  him  to  go  near  any 
poison-ivy,  or  climb  any  fences,  or  get  burrs  in  his  clothes, 
or  wet  his  feet.  Nat  bore  these  responsibilities  cheerfully 


THE   CHRONICLE   OF  SMALL   BEER  91 

enough;    as  it  happened  he  had  other  and  more  important 
matters  on  his  mind. 

"You've  got  to  be  quick,  but  you  musn't  get  into  a  hurry," 
he  counselled  the  excited  boy.  "You're  not  holding  your 
gun  right  —  let  me  show  you  —  see,  this  way.  And  set  it 
down  —  set  it  down  when  you  go  to  get  out  of  the  wagon 
or  into  it  or  to  get  over  a  wall  or  anything  —  you  know,  the 
trigger  might  catch  in  something.  Look  out  —  that's  not 
a  quail  up  there,  Georgie;  they  don't  roost  high,  you  know; 
that's  nothing  but  a  flicker,  let  it  alone,  they  aren't  any 
good  to  eat.  Well,  if  you  will  —  "  he  stood  aside  resignedly, 
while  Georgie  drew  a  bead  on  the  flicker,  missed  it  by  a 
generous  distance,  and  staggered  back  with  the  recoil  of  the 
gun.  He  was  not  at  all  strong. 

"You  hadn't  any  business  to  talk  to  me  while  I  was  aim 
ing,"  he  said  angrily,  turning  on  his  companion.  "I  don't 
believe  you  know  anything  about  hunting  —  the  way  to 
hunt  is  to  keep  quiet  —  that's  the  way  to  hunt.  You  just 
keep  still  the  next  time.  It's  all  your  fault  —  I'd  have  had 
him  if  you  hadn't  been  making  such  a  noise.  He  flew  away 
just  as  I  shot  —  you  scared  him  away.  And  then  talking 
that  way  you  kept  me  from  aiming.  What's  the  dog  run 
ning  'round  and  whining  that  way  for?" 

"He's  looking  for  the  bird;  he  don't  know  why,  but  he 
somehow  expects  something  to  fall  —  they  all  do  that  way. 
He's  just  a  young  dog,  you  know,  but  that's  his  nature;  he 
can't  help  it.  I'm  afraid  you  can't  make  him  keep  quiet," 
said  Nat,  trying  not  to  smile,  not  altogether  successfully, 
for  George  eyed  him  with  resentment. 

"Here,  load  the  gun,"  he  commanded,  thrusting  it  tow 
ards  the  other  —  and  then  shrank  back  in  obvious  fright. 
"What  are  you  looking  that  way  for?  I  haven't  done 
anything."  Nathan  had  been  on  the  point  of  telling  the 
young  gentleman  to  attend  to  his  gun  himself;  but  be 
thinking  him  that  it  would  be  a  pity  for  their  several  careers 
to  be  cut  short  by  the  explosion  or  other  misbehavior  of 
the  weapon,  he  gravely  took  and  loaded  it,  returning  it  to 
its  owner  with  further  advice. 

"You'll  have  to  allow  for  the  barrel  jerking  up  on  you  a 
little  when  you  fire,"  he  said,  feeling  an  inexplicable  rush  of 


92  NATHAN   BURKE 

pity  for  the  other's  trembling  hands,  his  weak  body,  his 
hysterical  impatience;  "and  when  you're  sighting  on  just 
one  bird,  you  know  —  because  they  don't  always  get  up  in 
a  covey  —  when  you're  sighting  on  just  one  bird  —  "  went 
on  Nathan,  trying  to  explain  the  unexplainable  —  "remem 
ber  you  must  kind  of  drop  the  shot  a  little  —  just  a  little 
ahead  of  him,  because  he'll  be  there  by  the  time  you've  fired, 
see?" 

Like  most  amateur  teachers,  he  wanted  to  teach  too  much 
at  one  lesson,  with  the  usual  result  that  he  taught  nothing 
at  all.  Nathan  could  not  remember  the  time  when  he  had 
not  known  how  to  handle  a  gun;  he  was  confused  himself 
at  finding  how  difficult  it  was  to  impart  what  seemed  to  him 
so  essentially  simple  a  thing;  and  his  well-meant  efforts 
served  only  to  fret  and  perplex  his  poor  little  pupil.  The 
first  time  the  birds  got  up  with  the  furious  loud  battling  of 
wings  which  accompanies  their  rise,  Georgie,  although  the 
dog  had  pointed  in  a  tense  silence  with  quivering  muscles 
for  fully  half  a  minute,  was  so  startled  that  he  stood  motion 
less,  staring;  and  Nat,  unable  to  bear  the  spectacle  of  so  good 
a  chance  going  to  waste,  snatched  the  gun  from  him,  and 
succeeded  in  winging  one  of  the  quail  —  a  proceeding  which 
George  very  properly  resented  and  for  which  Nathan  apol 
ogized  with  contrition.  "I  —  I  just  couldn't  help  it  — 
they  were  all  getting  away,"  he  explained  humbly;  "I  won't 
do  that  again,  George.  Here,  let  me  load  again  for  you. 
I'll  give  it  back  to  you,  I  will  —  honor  bright.  I'll  borrow 
Jake's  gun  for  myself  when  we  get  to  the  cabin."  Georgie 
forgave  him;  the  boy  was  always  ready  enough  to  make  up 
and  be  friends;  there  was  no  trace  of  vindictiveness  in  his 
disposition.  He  was  filled  with  delight  at  the  way  the  young 
setter  plunged  among  the  bushes  and  brought  out  the  bird, 
under  Nathan's  instructions,  panting  and  grinning  and  wag 
ging  his  plumed  tail,  a  happy  dog.  Yet  he  withdrew  in  a 
kind  of  horrified  distaste  from  the  warm  bleeding  body  of  the 
quail.  "It  smells  —  I  —  I  don't  like  to  touch  it  —  I  won't 
touch  it,"  he  gasped,  quite  pale  and  shuddering;  and  Nathan, 
who  suffered  no  humane  scruples  at  shooting  a  quail,  dropped 
it  into  the  bag,  wondering. 

They  fell  in  with  Darnell  towards  noon,  a  mile  or  so  from 
his  home,  and  walked  on  together,  Georgie  sidling  close  to 


THE   CHRONICLE   OF  SMALL   BEER  93 

Nat,  silent  for  once  and  oddly  overawed  by  the  backwoods 
man's  appearance.  Jake  was  sober,  to  Burke's  relief; 
he  came  upon  them  from  behind,  noiseless  as  an  Indian,  with 
his  ragged  old  pouch  stuffed  with  game  already.  "  'Bout 
four  dozen,  I  reckon,"  he  said  in  answer  to  Nat's  question; 
"  thick  as  hair  on  a  dog's  back,  ain't  they?  Ye  can't  hardly 
fire  at  one  without  hittin'  twenty.  All  ye  got  to  do  is  jest 
pint  yer  gun  an'  let  her  go  —  c'ld  do  it  with  yer  eyes  shet, 
'most.  Still,  I  dunno  —  game  ain't  as  plenty  as  it  useter 
be.  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  I'd  hev'  to  be  movin'  on  one  o' 
these  days.  It's  gittin'  too  crowded  up  'roun'  here."  As 
long  as  Nathan  knew  Darnell  this  had  always  been  his  plaint; 
he  had  been  moving  on  for  fifteen  years,  and  the  young 
man  listened  with  a  smile.  "They  say  it's  kinder  more 
roomy-like  in  th'  Illinois,"  said  Jake.  "I  might  try  it  out 
there,  'twan't  fer  Nance.  It's  hard  to  move  th'  wimmen- 
folks,  ye  know.  Hey?  Why,  sartain  ye  kin  hev'  it,  sartain. 
Yeh  kin  take  this  one,  er  come  on  up  to  th'  cabin  an'  git  that 
there  little  duck-gun  ye  useter  be  so  fond  of,  Nat.  That's 
a  first-rate  gun  th'  little  feller's  got,  ain't  it?  Criminy, 
that  there's  a  good  gun!  Is  that  Ducey's  boy?" 

He  bent  upon  Georgie  a  glance  so  abrupt  and  keen  the 
boy  trembled  before  it.  In  fact,  old  Jake  Darnell  in  his 
tawney  butternut-dyed  clothes,  his  moccasins,  and  coonskin 
cap,  with  his  leathery  face  wrinkled  like  a  boot-leg,  and  his 
quick  eyes  bright  and  unwinking  as  a  snake's,  however 
homely  and  natural  he  seemed  to  Nathan,  must  have  been  a 
fearsome  figure  to  the  little  town-bred  child.  I  do  not  know 
how  old  Jake  was  at  this  time;  he  looked  anywhere  between 
fifty  and  a  hundred.  He  once  said,  in  speaking  of  Boone, 
that  he  had  been  "jest  a  young  feller  startin'  out,"  when  he 
first  met  that  famous  scout  and  pathfinder.  "Yer  father 
was  younger 'n  me,  Nat,"  he  said;  "but  we  was  together  a 
good  deal.  I  knowed  yer  maw's  folks,  too.  I  met  up  with 
yer  gran'paw  Granger  'long  back  when  he  first  come  to  this 
country;  I  disremember  th'  year,  but  'twas  before  th'  war. 
Yer  gran'paw  come  fer  ter  take  up  some  land,  but  I  heern 
afterwards  he  died  'fore  he  ever  got  ter  do  it  —  died  uv  th' 
fever  over  ter  Muskingum  County  somewheres.  OP  woman 
Darce  she  kin  remember  him  too;  I  reckon  she  come  here 
'bout  th'  same  time.  Queer  how  folks  kinder  float  erroun' 


94  NATHAN   BURKE 

an'  erroun'  an'  bimeby  they  jest  float  up  inter  a  corner  like 
a  chip  in  th'  riffle  an'  stay  thar,  an'  don't  never  float  any 
more.  When  I  come  back  from  th'  war,  I  got  married  after 
er  while,  an'  yer  paw  he  got  married,  an'  that  nachelly  sepa 
rates  folks  —  men,  ye  know.  I  didn't  see  him  agin  till  both 
our  wives  was  dead.  I  tuk  up  some  land  an'  settled  here  th' 
year  o'  th'  big  squirrel-hunt.  You  was  borned  that  year, 
wan't  ye?  First  uv  th'  year,  seems  like  I  kin  remember. 
I'd  a  tuk  keer  uv  ye,  an'  glad  to,  Nat,  when  John  died,  hadn't 
'a'  been  fer  'Liph  steppin'  in  first."  "You  did  take  care  of 
me,"  Nathan  said.  He  knew  this  was  no  idle  talk;  the  older 
man  was  fond  of  him  perhaps  as  much  for  the  sake  of  remem 
bered  days  and  that  ancient  companionship  with  his  father 
as  for  Nat's  own.  Nobody  would  have  guessed  from  their 
greeting  that  any  warm  friendship  existed  between  them,  but 
neither  was  of  a  demonstrative  nature.  The  last  time  he  had 
seen  Darnell,  Nathan  had  found  him  wofully  drunk  in  the 
gutter  of  a  Scioto  street  slum  and  brought  him  by  stealth 
to  his  room  and  got  him  sobered  after  a  few  hours,  blessing 
his  stars  the  while  that  Jake's  sprees  never  took  a  noisy  or 
violent  turn.  Mrs.  Ducey  would  have  had  just  cause  for 
complaint  had  she  known  of  it,  yet  I  hardly  see  how  Nat 
could  have  let  his  poor  old  companion  lie  in  the  open  road. 
He  wondered  at  the  time  why  Nance  was  not  at  hand  to 
keep  her  father  straight,  as  had  been  her  intention. 

The  girl's  face  brightened  unaffectedly  when  she  saw  the 
visitor;  she  ran  out  to  meet  them,  her  red  calico  gown  flap 
ping,  her  black  hair  striving  with  the  wind.  "Lord,  Nat, 
but  I'm  glad  to  see  ye  —  it's  a  good  while  —  you've  growed, 
ain't  you  ?  You  look  a  sight  older.  Is  that  Mrs.  Ducey's 
little  boy?  How's  yer  ma,  sonny?"  she  asked  eagerly. 

"You  haven't  been  in  town  once,  Nance,"  said  Nathan, 
gazing  in  open  admiration.  "Why  not?  I  thought  you 
said  you  were  going  to?" 

"Why,  it  jest  happened  that  way.  I  —  I  haven't  got 
anything  fitten  to  wear  V  that's  th'  truth,"  she  said,  giving 
this  feminine  reason  with  a  half-laugh  as  she  glanced  down, 
with  no  great  concern,  however,  at  her  not  very  voluminous 
skirts.  "I  'low  people  would  think  'twas  a  Injun  if  they 
saw  me  comin',"  she  stated  cheerfully. 

"Pretty    good-looking    Indian,    Nance,"    Nat    told    her 


THE   CHRONICLE   OF  SMALL   BEER  95 

honestly.      She    colored,    eying   him   with    a    little    resent 
ment. 

"Aw,  quit,  Nat  Burke,  you  want  to  be  smart,  I  guess  — 
gittin'  citified,  ain't  ye?  Say,  I  got  somethin'  fer  yer  ma, 
little  boy.  What's  yer  name  ?  Georgie  ?  Speak  up,  don't 
be  so  skeered.  I  was  layin'  off  to  give  it  to  her  myself,  but 
mebbe  you'd  better  take  it.  Wait  a  minute."  She  dashed 
into  the  house,  and  Nathan  looked  after  her  in  wonder  ; 
yet  it  is  likely  the  two  years  had  wrought  less  change  in 
Nance  than  in  himself.  Thus  had  she  always  looked  and 
acted,  so  free,  so  brilliant,  and  so  wild.  He  told  himself  that 
he  had  forgot  how  pretty  Nance  was;  but  it  seemed  as  if 
she  and  the  bland  goddesses  of  Mrs.  Ducey's  front  porch 
could  hardly  be  creatures  of  the  same  planet.  Nance 
bloomed  in  her  wilderness  with  a  savage  integrity  of  beauty; 
she  was  aloof  as  a  Diana,  no  more  moving  the  senses  than  a 
shaft  of  flame,  bright  and  leaping. 

"I  don't  let  her  go  to  town,  Nat,"  said  Darnell,  meeting 
the  other's  eye.  A  sudden  extraordinary  sort  of  ferocity 
appeared  in  his  expression;  he  struck  the  butt  of  his  gun 
heavily  on  the  ground.  "I  ain't  goin'  ter  let  her  go  in  town, 
no  matter  what  you  say,"  he  repeated  vehemently  as  if 
Nathan  had  contradicted  him.  "She  —  she  ain't  got  no 
mother,  V  Lord  knows  that's  hard  enough  on  a  girl,  V 
I  ain't  much  of  a  father  —  oh,  I  know  that!  I  won't  let 
her  go  nor  I  won't  take  her  neither.  She  —  she's  too  pretty, 
an'  she  ain't  got  nobody  to  look  after  her  like  she'd  orter 
be  looked  after,  'cep'n  me  —  an'  what  do  I  'mount  to  ?  'F 
anything  was  to  happen  to  me,  I  always  'lowed  you'd  kinder 
take  keer  of  Nance,  Nathan  —  not  that  you've  any  call  to, 
but- 

"Why,  of  course  I  would,  but  there  isn't  anything  going 
to  happen  to  you,"  Nathan  answered  him,  surprised  at  this 
emotional  outburst;  and  Nance  came  radiantly  back, 
bearing  a  large  bundle. 

"It's  fur  —  squirrels'  pelts,  fer  a  muff  an'  a  —  a  —  one 
of  them  things  ladies  wear  'roun'  their  necks,"  she  said, 
depositing  it  in  Georgie's  unwilling  hands;  "I  dressed  'em 
myself.  They're  prime  skins  —  ain't  they,  Papa  ?  Jest  feel 
of  'em,  Nat,  jest  prod  yer  finger  down  in  that  fur  —  ain't 
that  thick  an'  silky,  though?" 


96  NATHAN   BURKE 

"She  was  plumb  sot  on  it,"  said  her  father,  indulgently; 
"durned  if  I  didn't  shoot  thirty  squirrel  fer  one  that  she'd 
pick  out." 

"  Yer  ma'll  look  pretty  in  'em,  won't  she?"  said  Nance  to 
the  boy;  " you've  got  a  pretty  ma,  ain't  you?  Pretty  as  a 
picture.  They  ain't  nothin'  too  good  fer  her,  I  guess." 

"Ma's  got  elegant  things,  I  don't  believe  she'll  care  about 
these,"  said  Georgie,  handling  the  pelts  disdainfully;  "my 
mother's  furs  cost  a  lot.  I  guess  you've  never  seen  anything 
nice,  have  you?" 

Georgie  pursued  the  chase  with  a  luck  so  indifferent  that 
perhaps  it  was  not  surprising  he  should  tire  before  long,  and 
his  enthusiasm  die.  Perseverance,  which  seems  to  vary  with 
the  individual  all  the  way  from  an  interested  industry  to 
resolute  and  purely  selfish  ambition  was  not  one  of  Georgie's 
qualities  in  any  of  its  forms.  'Nathan  knew  that;  but  what 
he  could  not  understand  and  found  difficult  to  support  was 
the  perversity  of  the  boy's  idleness.  He  loitered  on  the  way, 
he  threw  stones  at  the  most  promising  coverts,  he  called, 
he  whistled,  he  let  off  his  gun  at  nothing,  apparently  from 
a  simple  enjoyment  of  noise,  to  the  distraction  of  the  setter 
who  was  a  serious  animal  intent  on  the  affairs  of  sport. 
Nathan,  who,  supplied  with  Darnell's  gun,  was  having  a  day 
of  sober  enjoyment  among  the  birds,  felt  himself  for  once 
utterly  at  a  loss  in  his  irritation  and  helplessness.  Georgie 
was  an  unspeakable  annoyance,  but  he  did  not  dare  to  leave 
him  alone;  and  after  the  first  failures  it  was  impossible  to 
arouse  the  boy  to  further  attempts.  He  wanted  to  climb 
trees,  to  collect  nuts,  to  wade  in  the  Scioto,  to  do  anything 
on  earth  but  shoot  quail.  And  it  was  only  when  Nat  an 
nounced  that  the  time  and  spot  were  reached  for  camping 
that  Georgie  displayed  any  interest  in  his  movements. 
Then,  to  Burke's  unbounded  astonishment,  George  threw 
himself  into  the  housewifely  duties  of  making  a  fire  and 
getting  the  noonday  meal  with  an  unbelievable  zest  and 
handiness.  He  gathered  sticks  and  dry  leaves,  fetched  water, 
unpacked  their  cups  and  platters,  watched  over  the  roasting 
of  their  potatoes  in  the  hot  ashes,  the  boiling  of  their  coffee, 
amiable,  tireless,  ready,  neat,  helpful!  "Beats  me!"  said 
Nat  to  himself,  lost  in  wonder;  and  it  occurred  to  him  for 


THE  CHRONICLE  OF  SMALL  BEER     97 

the  first  time  to  speculate  as  to  what  sort  of  man  George 
Ducey  would  grow  up  to  be.  He  was  approaching  fifteen 
already  and  was  to  be  sent  to  Miami  University  next  year. 
What  would  Nat  Burke  have  given  for  such  a  chance  ? 

He  drew  a  short  sigh  as  he  fell  to  planning  out  his  own 
future  in  view  of  certain  impending  changes.  No  college 
course  figured  therein;  Nat,  in  the  wisdom  and  gravity  of 
his  eighteen-year  judgment,  considered  himself  too  old  now 
to  profit  by  the  study  of  the  classics  and  the  higher  branches 
of  learning.  I  believe,  in  reality,  the  scholastic  career  and 
aims  had  no  attractions  for  him;  what  he  dimly  sought  was 
a  life  of  larger  and  more  vigorous  action.  He  looked  around 
him  at  the  woodland  landscape  and  marvelled  in  his  soul  that 
he  had  ever  been  able  to  endure  its  serene,  dispassionate, 
contented  calm.  It  was  not  that  life  was  so  easy  there; 
nowhere  in  the  world  do  we  get  something  for  nothing,  and 
a  man  must  do  his  best  and  work  his  hardest  for  any  kind  of 
prize,  be  it  at  husbandry  or  what  you  will.  But  amongst 
these  hard-faring  settlers  it  would  seem  as  if  the  end  of  all 
achievement  were  merely  to  make  a  living ;  and  that  of  itself, 
Nathan  knew  in  his  heart,  would  never  appease  him  now. 
He  remembered  that  ridiculous  old  dam  of  Pascoe's  with  a 
grin;  the  thing  was  so  emblematic  of  the  pioneer  spirit, 
rough-and-ready,  conquering  and  careless.  The  dam  served 
—  what  more  would  you  have  ?  Indeed  he  could  hardly 
answer  that  question  to  his  own  satisfaction ;  throughout 
the  day  the  young  man  had  been  conscious  of  some  indefin 
able  change  in  himself,  since  all  else  was  the  same.  He 
thought  with  a  strange  pang  of  regret  that  Mrs.  Williams 
had  been  right ;  he  could  never  come  back  here  now.  He 
had  been  back  only  once  in  all  this  while.  The  familiar  air 
was  good;  the  sound  of  the  river  was  good;  the  fields  of  stub 
ble,  the  autumn  woods,  all  as  he  had  pictured  them;  the  place 
had  been  home  to  him,  but,  with  another  pang,  he  realized 
that  it  would  never  be  so  again.  He  had  left  there  with  no 
higher  aim  than  to  become  a  shining  light  among  hired  men 
-  what  were  his  ambitions  now  ?  The  young  fellow  blushed 
and  laughed  at  his  own  exalted  dreams,  forgetting  to  answer 
the  boy  at  his  side  as  they  drove  along. 

They  stopped  at  the  Williams  cabin  towards  mid-after 
noon,  having  by  this  time,  partly  on  foot,  partly  in  the  spring- 


98  NATHAN   BURKE 

wagon,  fetched  a  compass  about  all  the  fields  and  deaden- 
ings  where  Nat  had  been  used  to  hunt  in  the  old  days  —  the 
days  which  seemed  so  old,  yet  were  not  such  a  great  while 
behind  him  after  all.  It  went  to  his  heart  to  find  himself 
received  almost  as  a  stranger.  Mrs.  Williams  wiped  her 
hands  on  her  dingy  gown  before  shaking  his  —  those  knotty 
hands  of  hers,  if  the  truth  were  told,  had  administered  more 
than  one  much-needed  correction  to  Nat  Burke  when  he 
was  about  the  age  of  little  Johnny  or  Abe  over  there;  he 
thought  this  formality  sat  ill  on  them  now.  The  younger 
children  came  and  looked  at  him  and  at  Georgie,  —  who  was 
highly  gratified  at  this  tribute  and  assumed  a  wonderfully 
important  and  dignified  air,  —  shy  and  silent,  holding  to 
their  mother's  skirts.  There  was  a  new  baby.  The  only 
natural  figure  in  the  company  was  that  of  old  woman  Darce, 
still  smoking  her  everlasting  pipe  like  an  animated  mummy 
by  the  hearth,  whence  she  appeared  never  to  have  moved 
since  Nathan's  departure,  not  at  all  concerned  in  his  comings 
or  goings  and  having  to  have  everything  screamed  at  her 
twice  or  thrice  before  she  could  catch  the  meaning. 

"It's  Nathan,  Maw,  Nathan  Burke's  come  back,"  Mrs. 
Williams  shouted  in  her  ear. 

"  Huh  ?  Nat's  come  back  ?  Did  he  git  th'  grist  ?  "  asked 
the  old  woman;  and  Nat  had  to  laugh,  recalling  the  times 
when  perched  on  old  Baldy's  back,  a  position  somewhat 
comparable  to  sitting  on  a  chain  of  door-knobs,  with  the  sack 
of  corn  balanced  before  him,  he  had  jogged  to  mill  at  Frank- 
linton,  ten  miles  there  and  back. 

"She  don't  hardly  take  notice  of  anythin'  nowadays,  Nat ; 
I  reckon  she's  f ergot  you  been  away,"  said  Mrs.  Williams, 
apologetically. 

"No,  I  ain't  f  ergot  it,  'n'  ye  don't  need  to  holler  so,  Lindy  ; 
I  kin  hear  ye,"  said  her  mother,  testily,  with  the  inconvenient 
alertness  of  deaf  old  age.  But  she  added  the  next  moment: 
"  Ef  he's  brung  th'  grist,  you  tell  him  to  come  here,  'n'  I've  got 
a  piece  o'  slippery-ellum  bark  fer  him.  He's  a  good,  stiddy 
boy,  Nat  is." 

Nathan  went  up  to  her  to  receive  this  reward  of  merit  in 
amused  tolerance,  and  the  old  woman  removed  her  pipe, 
studying  him  with  her  dim  old  eyes  wherein  one  might  dis 
cern  a  kind  of  flickering  interest,  although  her  mask-like  face 


THE   CHRONICLE   OF  SMALL   BEER  99 

showed  no  change  of  expression,  perhaps  was  incapable  of 
any. 

"Ye're  growin',"  she  commented;  "here,  coopee  down 
so's  I  .kin  git  a  look  at  yeh.  I  wanter  see  ef  yeh  favor  yer 
maw  er  paw."  And,  as  the  young  man  obediently  squatted 
down  at  her  knees,  she  thrust  forward  her  face  and  long, 
skinny  neck  into  a  not  too  agreeable  proximity,  taking 
census  of  his  features.  Mrs.  Williams  looked  on  impa 
tiently,  the  children  giggled  together,  George  idled  about 
the  room,  with  critical  glances. 

"Huh,  Granger  cPar  through,"  announced  Mrs.  Darce, 
at  length,  seeming  to  take  considerable  satisfaction  in  this 
conclusion ;  Nathan  was  rising  when  she  arrested  him  with 
another  question:  "What  color's  yer  hair,  Nat?  I  cain't 
see  it  —  this  light's  dretful  pore.  Nathan  Granger,  his  hair 
was  jest  turnin'  white,  but  it  hed  been  light.  Ye're  light- 
complected,  ain't  yeh  ?" 

"Kind  of  middling,  I  guess,"  shouted  Burke,  grinning 
around  at  Mrs.  Williams. 

"You'd  be  light  enough,  ef  'twasn't  fer  bein'  tanned  up  so," 
remarked  the  latter.  "Yes,  Maw,  he's  kinder  light,"  she 
screamed,  and  to  Burke  in  an  aside:  "Land!  Ain't  it  funny 
th'  notions  ol'  people  gits  ?  Who  d'ye  s'pose  Nathan  Granger 
was  ?  I  never  heern  o'  him  before.  Was  that  there  Granger 
man  kin  to  Nat,  Maw?"  she  screamed  again. 

"Hey?" 

"Who  was  Nathan  Granger?"  bellowed  Burke,  beginning 
to  be  interested  in  his  family-tree.  "Was  he  one  of  my 
mother's  people?" 

"Hey?  Yes.  Oh,  my  lordy,  yes.  It's  him  yer  named 
fer  —  yer  maw  wanted  it  thet  way.  She  said  so  before  she 
died,  pore  little  thing.  He  was  her  paw.  Kinder  funny  how 
ye  favor  him,  Nat;  he  warn't  over  V  above  good-lookin', 
jes'  so-so.  Ain't  I  ever  toP  yeh  'bout  him?  I  knowed  him 
right  well.  He  was  a  Britisher,  ye  know.  Come  from 
Canady,  time  o'  th'  Revolution.  I  met  up  with  him  'long 
back  when  we  first  come  here.1  That  was  before  I  was  mar 
ried  ter  Lindy's  paw,  Ben  Darce;  'twas  when  my  first  man 
was  alive  —  before  th'  Injuns  got  him.  Ain't  I  ever  toP 
you  'bout  that?" 

1  Probably  about  1792.  —  GENEEAL  BURKE'S  NOTE. 


100  NATHAN   BURKE 

* 

"No,  you  never  told  me.     I'd  like  to  hear  about  Gran  — 
Nathan  was  beginning,  but  Mrs.  Williams  interrupted  him 
with  a  warning  gesture. 

"Fer  th'  land's  sake,  Nat,  don't  git  her  started  on  them 
ol'  times,"  she  whispered  energetically;  " it'll  wear  ye  plumb 
out,  'n'  'sides  that  it  gits  th'  pore  ol'  woman  all  flustered 
up  'n'  excited-like,  'n'  I  dunno  ez  it's  right  ter  let  her  talk 
'bout  'em.  Yeh  know  her  first  husband  was  kilt  by  th' 
Injuns  over  ter  Wheeling  airly  days  —  they  was  all  shet  up 
in  th'  blockhouse,  'cep'n  him.  He  couldn't  git  in  somehow, 
'n'  she  saw  them  red  devils  do  it.  I've  knowed  her  git  ter 
cryin'  'n'  screamin'  like  she  was  crazy  tellin'  'bout  it.  Don't 
you  riccollect  ?  " 

Nat  did  remember,  and  was  quick  enough  to  direct  the 
talk  elsewhere  —  though,  to  be  sure,  old  woman  Darce  ap 
peared  already  to  have  forgot  his  presence,  and  sat  staring 
and  smoking  and  working  her  jaws  in  her  corner  as  usual. 
He  could  ask  Darnell  some  time  about  this  Britisher  Nathan 
Granger,  he  thought;  and  speedily  forgot  the  whole  oc 
currence,  listening  to  the  news  of  the  country-side,  and 
preparing  to  startle  Mrs.  Williams  with  some  news  of  his 
own.  "Did  ye  hear  'bout  Pascoe,  Nat?  He's  going  ter 
hev'  er  law-suit.  I  don't  know's  I've  got  th'  straight  of  it, 
but  seems  they  was  a  piece  of  land  Pascoe  was  going  to  sell 
fer  a  man  up  to  Delaware  —  man  by  th'  name  of  Marshall. 
'Twas  that  piece  of  river-bottom  next  to  Pinney's  —  you 
know  —  'n'  Pascoe  he  'lowed  he  could  talk  Pinney  inter 
buyin'  it,  'n'  then  Pascoe'd  git  a  —  a  c'mmission,  I  b'lieve 
they  call  it.  But  he  didn't  —  Pinney  acted  so  kinder  offish. 
Pascoe  said  he  jest  give  him  up  after  a  while,  'n'  tried  some 
other  folks  livin'  over  to  Worthin'ton.  'N'  then  Marshall 
he  died  here  last  April  'n'  th'  first  thing  you  know  - 

I  am  afraid  Mr.  Burke  hardly  heard  the  tale  of  Pascoe's 
troubles,  though  he  tried  to  listen  and  chided  himself  in 
wardly  for  his  indifference.  The  young  man's  head  was  full 
of  his  own  affairs;  and  he  seized  the  first  pause  in  Mrs. 
Williams's  talk  to  announce  with  appropriate  importance:  — 

"I'm  going  to  make  a  change  —  perhaps  I'd  better  tell 
you  now  before  I  forget  it  "         Forget  it!     Oh,  Nathan!  — 
"After  the  first  of  the  year  I  won't  be  with  Duceys  any  more 
—  choring,  you  know." 


THE   CHRONICLE   OF  SMALL   BEEll          101 

•tth 

"  Won't  ?  Why  ?  Have  they  turned  you  off  ?  You  don't 
say  !  What  fer  ?  What  you  been  doin'?" 

"No,  they  haven't  turned  me  off,"  said  Nat,  with  some 
warmth.  "But  I'm  going  down  to  clerk  at  the  store.  One 
of  their  boys  is  leaving  them,  and  old  Mr.  Marsh  wants  me 
to  try  it.  He  stopped  me  and  talked  to  me  about  it  the 
other  day.  He  thinks  I'd  do  all  right  —  I  know  what  some 
of  the  work  is,  being  down  there  so  much  to  get  things.  I 
know  I  can  do  it." 

" Clerk,  hey  ? "  echoed  Mrs.  Williams,  abstractedly.  "You, 
Johnny,  don't  you  go  to  foolin'  with  that  there  powder  V 
shot  —  make  him  quit  it,  Nathan.  Clerkin'  fer  Mr.  Marsh, 
did  you  say  ?  I  thought  somehow  'twas  Ducey's  store.  As 
I  was  tellin'  ye,  Pascoe  he  — " 

Georgie  and  his  tutor  did  not  reach  home  until  late  that 
evening,  driving  along  the  unkempt  roads  under  the  solemn 
radiance  of  the  Hunters'  Moon,  and  Mrs.  Ducey  was  much 
alarmed  to  see  her  boy  asleep  in  the  bottom  of  the  wagon, 
covered  with  Nat's  coat,  and  his  head  pillowed  upon  the  roll 
of  squirrels'  pelts.  She  took  his  companion  sharply  to  task 
for  George's  condition. 

"Georgie  was  exhausted  —  perfectly  exhausted,"  she 
declaimed  afterwards;  "it  was  very  careless  of  you,  Nathan, 
to  let  him  wear  himself  out  that  way ;  you  ought  to  have 
taken  better  care  of  him,  you  know  he's  not  strong.  He'll 
have  to  stay  in  bed  for  a  day  or  two.  I  don't  care  if  he  does 
lose  the  time  from  school,  he's  as  white  as  a  sheet  this  morn 
ing.  Sallie,  take  that  custard  and  quince  jelly  and  that 
piece  of  chocolate  cake  up  to  Mr.  George,  and  I'll  have  you 
make  him  a  little  oyster  stew  after  a  while." 

When  her  fears  were  quieted  down  enough  for  her  to  notice 
Nance's  tribute,  Mrs.  Ducey  was  divided  between  wonder  and 
perplexity  —  as  was,  perhaps,  natural.  Nat  overheard  her 
in  council  with  the  family:  "Well,  the  furs  are  really  very 
fine,  if  they  are  nothing  but  squirrel,  as  fine  as  I  ever  saw, 
but  did  you  ever  f  What  do  you  suppose  possessed  the  girl  ? 
I  don't  believe  I  ever  saw  her  in  my  life.  William  says  I 
have  at  the  store,  but  those  country-women  look  exactly 
alike,  all  of  them ;  I'm  sure  I  wouldn't  know  her.  I  don't 
know  what  to  do  —  don't  you  suppose  I'd  better  send  her 


102  NATHAN    BURKE 

something?  Oh,  I  know,  I'll  give  her  that  green  velvet 
dress,  I  can't  wear  it  any  more  —  you  know  that  moss- 
green  velvet  with  the  gilt  buttons.  It's  perfectly  good  still, 
except  where  I  spilled  the  coffee  over  it,  and  just  a  little 
worn  around  the  bottom,  and  she'll  never  notice  things  like 
that.  She'll  think  it  was  that  way  from  the  beginning. 
I  guess  that's  what  I'd  better  do.  Nathan  could  take  it  out 
to  her  some  time  when  he  has  a  day  off." 

Nathan  scarcely  knew  why  he  shrunk  at  the  plan;  he 
could  not  tell  any  more  than  Mrs.  Ducey  what  had  pos 
sessed  Nance;  he  could  not  have  explained  in  words  Mrs. 
Anne  could  understand  that  it  had  seemed  to  him  there  was 
a  high  feeling  in  this  free  and  eager  offering  of  the  best  Nance 
had,  some  spirit  above  bargaining  or  recompense.  He 
hoped  he  would  not  have  to  carry  out  the  green  velvet  dress  ; 
and  in  fact  he  never  did,  nor  did  Nance  ever  wear  it.  I 
remember  to  have  seen  Mrs.  Ducey  in  a  cloak  lined  with  the 
fur  every  winter  for  twenty  years  thereafter;  they  were  fine 
furs  as  she  said  and  wore  —  eh,  how  much,  how  much  they 
did  outwear  and  outlast ! 

There  were  twenty  odd  quail  in  the  bags,  and  Nathan 
was  not  surprised  to  hear  within  a  day  or  two  that  Georgie 
had  shot  three-fourths  of  them.  The  information  tickled 
him  so  that  he  would  not  have  corrected  it  for  worlds. 
"  George  would  have  shot  them  all  if  it  hadn't  been  for  me 
making  such  a  noise,"  he  said  with  gravity  in  answer  to  a 
shrewd  question  or  two  from  Mr.  Marsh  —  whereat  the 
latter,  who  allowed  himself  a  good  deal  of  familiarity  with  the 
young  man,  slapped  him  on  the  shoulder  and  burst  into  a 
dislocating  chuckle.  Old  George  cherished  no  particular 
affection  for  his  nephew  —  largely,  I  believe,  because  the 
boy  was  named  after  him.  It's  not  an  unusual  prejudice; 
for  I  will  say  fairly  I  have  yet  to  see  the  man  who  feels  him 
self  complimented  by  his  namesakes! 


CHAPTER  VIII 
IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  MAKES  A  NEW  START 

NAT  had  been  a  good  deal  startled  and  pleased  and  flat 
tered  by  old  Marsh's  offer;  milking  cows  is  an  honorable 
occupation,  but  he  liked  to  think  that  one  man  at  least  had 
observed  in  him  the  stuff  for  better  things;  it  would  be 
difficult  to  say  at  what  time  other  ambitions  began  to  take 
shape  within  him,  but  certainly  he  had  not  expected  to 
remain  a  chore-boy  all  his  life.  Nobody  knows  what  grandi 
ose  schemes  and  visions  had  possessed  him;  yet  it  is  some 
what  to  his  credit  that,  even  at  that  age,  Nathan  recognized 
that  the  invariable  prelude  to  success  is  a  deal  of  hard  work. 
He  had  no  notion  of  shirking  that  part  of  Life's  bargain, 
or  of  winning  by  a  trick.  He  accepted  the  proposal  as 
eagerly  as  was  natural  to  his  rather  cautious  and  reserved 
temper,  with  no  distrust  of  his  own  abilities,  but  with  a 
sober  anxiety  to  show  his  worthiness.  So  far,  he  believed, 
he  had  not  failed  to  satisfy  his  employers;  he  would  not 
fail  of  satisfying  Mr.  Marsh  now  —  he  never  thought  of 
the  other  member  of  the  firm. 

The  truth  is,  Mr.  William  Ducey  was  notified  of  this 
arrangement  in  the  bluntest  possible  manner,  and  with  no 
pretence  of  consulting  his  convenience  or  preference,  by 
George  Marsh  himself.  It  was  not  the  first  time  something 
of  the  kind  had  taken  place;  the  clerks  came  and  went 
at  Marsh's  pleasure;  lived,  moved,  and  had  their  being  under 
his  eye.  When  Nathan  had  finished  out  his  appointed  days 
in  the  Ducey  household,  he  was  dismissed  from  the  one 
position  and  welcomed  into  the  other  by  William  with  as 
much  of  a  flourish  as  if  the  exchange  had  not  been,  so  far  as 
Ducey  himself  was  concerned,  in  a  sense,  compulsory.  "I 
hope,  Burke,  you  will  acquit  yourself  as  well  in  a  fiduciary 
position  as  you  have  in — er  —  ah—  "  said  William,  rather 
at  a  loss  for  the  proper  term  to  apply  to  Nat's  late  cares, 

103 


104  NATHAN   BURKE 

and  waving  his  hand  toward  the  barnyard  in  delicate  illus 
tration;  and  Nathan  thanked  him,  grinning  faintly.  If 
he  had  no  especial  admiration  for  Ducey,  Nat  at  least  knew 
him  to  be  an  honest  and  good-hearted  man,  who  sincerely 
wished  his  ex-chore-boy  well,  perhaps  even  had  some  vague 
understanding  of  the  latter's  ambitions  and  applauded  them. 
Not  so  Mrs.  Ducey;  if  William  was  disposed  to  "  crinkle 
down"  in  obedience  to  her  uncle's  dictum,  Anne  was  not. 
She  was  too  obstinate  and  high-spirited  to  be  afraid  of 
George  Marsh  or  anybody;  and  did  not  hesitate  to  inform 
him,  greatly  to  the  old  gentleman's  amusement,  that  the 
transfer  was  the  most  tyrannical  thing  she  had  ever  heard  of, 
the  most  foolish,  short-sighted,  and  inconsiderate.  Nathan 
was  astonished  to  find  himself  numbered  with  those  bless 
ings  which  brighten  as  they  take  their  flight !  He  was  a 
fine  chore-boy,  the  best  chore-boy  they  had  ever  had,  so 
faithful,  so  steady,  so  capable !  It  was  a  shame  to  stick 
him  in  a  counting-room  and  try  to  make  a  clerk  of  him  — 
well,  we  should  see  !  In  six  months  he  would  be  glad  to  come 
back  and  go  to  making  garden  and  driving  the  carriage 
again.  Think  what  a  good  home  and  good  wholesome  food 
he  had  here ;  often  and  often  she  had  taken  a  nice  roast 
chicken  wing  or  neck  that  had  hardly  been  touched  and 
sent  it  out  to  him  from  her  own  table  —  eh  ?  No,  he  never 
seemed  to  eat  it,  to  be  sure ;  he  didn't  appreciate  a  little 
kindness  like  that  the  way  a  colored  servant  would  ;  you  know 
you  couldn't  expect  it,  the  way  he  had  been  brought  up  out 
in  the  back  woods. 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  remarked  old  George,  thought 
fully;  "to  my  notion  a  chore-boy's  a  chore-boy,  and  a 
garbage-barrel's  a  garbage-barrel,  and,  by  damn,  I  don't 
believe  in  mixing  'em  up  !" 

"I  don't  think  it's  necessary  for  you  to  use  that  sort  of 
language  before  me,  Uncle  George,  and  it  certainly  isn't 
nice"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  with  dignity.  "I  suppose  you  think 
swearing  is  one  of  the  things  it  will  be  good  for  Nathan  to 
learn.  You  will  only  be  putting  him  in  the  way  of  tempta 
tion,  giving  him  twice  as  much  wages  for  work  he  won't 
be  able  to  do ;  and  then  when  he  has  to  come  down  to  choring 
again,  he  will  be  absolutely  spoiled  for  it,  and  will  be  sure 
to  go  to  the  dogs  right  away.  I'm  surprised  at  Nathan  — 


MR.   BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW  START        105 

I  thought  he'd  have  more  gratitude,  after  all  we've  done  for 
him  —  giving  him  all  Will's  old  clothes  and  everything  — 
and  after  all  I've  done  myself.  I've  gone  out  and  mixed 
a  pitcher  of  hot  flaxseed  tea  for  him  when  he  was  sick  with 
a  cold  —  yes,  and  got  medicine  for  him  —  Jayne's  Vermi 
fuge—" 

"What!"  yelled  old  George;  "Jayne's  whatf" 

"Vermifuge  —  for  worms,  you  know  —  all  young  boys 
need  it.  He  wouldn't  take  it,  though  I  did  my  best  to  make 
him.  He's  a  very  stubborn  disposition  —  really,  Uncle 
George,  when  you  laugh  that  way,  I'm  sometimes  afraid 
you'll  have  a  stroke." 

Nat  could  not  help  overhearing  these  jeremiads;  there 
never  was  any  privacy  for  anybody,  not  excepting  herself, 
where  Mrs.  Ducey  was ;  she  argued,  scolded,  lamented 
coram  publico,  not  being  able  to  conceive  of  any  need  for 
reticence  especially  where  servants  were  concerned,  and 
being  in  all  things  absolutely  frank,  literal,  and  direct.  She 
said  no  more  than  was  true  of  her  kindnesses,  which  were  as 
headlong  and  ill-judged  as  her  unkindnesses,  and  moved 
Nathan  equally  with  a  species  of  helpless  and  tender  amuse 
ment. 

Of  the  other  members  of  the  family,  Georgie  took,  very 
little  interest  in  the  hired  man's  affairs;  but  Frances,  upon 
hearing  of  the  change,  and  beholding  Nat's  few  belongings 
depart  in  a  box  and  carpet-bag  to  the  lodgings  he  had  found 
in  an  exceedingly  modest  neighborhood  at  the  other  end  of 
town,  exhibited  an  emotion  that  alarmed  and,  to  be  truthful, 
annoyed  this  hero  considerably.  The  little  thing  —  Francie 
was  about  eleven  at  this  time,  but  very  short,  dumpy,  and 
homely  —  clung  to  him,  weeping  aloud.  She  unblushingly 
wound  her  arms  around  his  neck  and  burrowed  her  head  into 
his  fine  new  black  silk  stock  with  the  buckle  at  the  back 
to  which  Nat  had  treated  himself  in  honor  of  his  emancipa 
tion;  she  shed  bitter  tears  all  over  his  clean  collar  and  shirt- 
front.  Nathan  was  going  away  and  she  refused  to  be 
comforted;  you  would  have  thought  he  was  bound  for  the 
other  side  of  the  globe  by  all  the  tragic  to-do  she  made. 

"Why,  gracious  goodness,  I'll  be  right  down  at  the  store 
every  day  of  the  world,  Francie,"  said  the  young  fellow, 
too  soft-hearted  to  disengage  himself  forcibly,  yet  crimson 


106  NATHAN    BURKE 

with  a  wretched  embarrassment  before  the  giggling  maid 
servants,  and  fervently  wishing  he  could  think  of  something 
to  quiet  her;  " there's  a  new  hired  'man  coming  to-mor 
row  —  he's  coming  from  just  the  same  place  I  did,  and  I've 
showed  him  how  to  do  everything  —  and  all  about  your 
swing  and  the  playhouse  and  everything  else,"  said  Nat, 
wondering  privately  how  long  Joe  Williams,  who  was  an 
honest  and  well-meaning,  but  not  overclever  lad,  would 
stick  it  out  with  Mrs.  Ducey.  ''He'll  be  just  the  same  as  I 
am—" 

"No,  he  won't  —  I  h-hate  him  —  I  w-wish  he'd  go  away 
—  I  w-want  you  !  " 

"Oh,  now,  you  won't  feel  that  way.  You'll  be  all  over 
that  in  a  little,"  said  Nat,  removing  a  bunch  of  her  curls 
from  his  mouth,  and  at  his  wits'  end  for  words  of  comfort. 

"Look  here,  I've  got  something  of  yours  —  I've  got  your 
quarter,  don't  you  remember  ?  You  haven't  asked  me  about 
that  for  a  good  while,  have  you  ?  Look,  here  it  is." 

Fresh  wails  and  sobs!  "I  w-want  you  to  have  it!  I 
want  you  to  k-keep  it!" 

"Why,  no,  you  don't,  Francie  ;  that's  your  money,  you 
know.  You  don't  want  it  now,  maybe,  but  you  will  some 
day." 

"No,  I  won't,  Nathan,"  said  the  child,  lifting  her  poor 
little  wet  face  to  his.  "I  want  you  to  keep  it  forevernever. 
Cross  your  heart  and  say  you'll  keep  it." 

And  this  sentimental  rite  being  performed,  Mrs.  Ducey 
most  opportunely  happened  along,  attracted  by  the  doleful 
uproar,  and  took  Francie  away  with  a  prim  and  shocked 
expression.  "The  idea,  Frances,  a  great  big  girl  like  you, 
aren't  you  ashamed  of  yourself  ?  Hanging  on  to  Nathan 
that  way  -  Her  searching  voice  descended  to  the  kitchen, 
and  the  maids  sniggered  again.  Nat  was  glad  to  escape ; 
he  wearied  of  the  petticoat  tyranny,  wearied  of  the  narrow 
little  domestic  world.  He  whistled  his  tuneless  whistle  as 
he  turned  his  back  on  the  house  and  strode  jubilantly  away, 
while  Francie  was  crying  her  eyes  out  upstairs.  Before  he 
had  reached  the  store,  Nathan  had  forgot  her  ;  it  was  only 
when  his  fingers  touched  the  coin  in  his  pocket  that  she  re 
curred  to  his  mind,  and  then  with  the  emphatic  hope  that 
none  of  the  other  young  men  would  hear  of  that  ridiculous 


MR.   BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW   START        107 

scene.  Yet  he  was  really  fond  of  Francie,  who  was  a  sweet- 
tempered,  patient,  good  child,  always  ready  to  run  her  fat 
little  legs  off  waiting  on  her  aunt,  on  Georgie  who  frequently 
availed  himself  of  her  willingness,  on  anybody  who  asked 
her;  always  conscientiously  laboring  over  her  scales  and 
five-finger  exercises,  and  getting  her  lessons  every  night  with 
a  devotion  to  duty  which  should  have  stirred  Nat's  admira 
tion.  He  had  officiated  as  sexton  at  the  funerals  of  sundry 
dolls,  birds,  puppies,  and  so  on,  and  endeavored  so  often  to 
soothe  the  grief  of  the  chief  mourner,  even  to  the  point  of 
whittling  out  monuments  with  eulogies  of  the  deceased  and 
planting  rose-bushes  upon  the  graves,  that  he  knew  Francie's 
faithful  and  affectionate  disposition;  her  attachment  to  him 
was  as  natural  as  her  attachment  to  Rover,  the  old  collie,  he 
thought,  with  a  laugh.  In  this  wide  world  there  was  not 
another  soul  who  cared  enough  about  him  to  weep  at  parting  ; 
and  it  seems  to  me  now  that  Nat  might  have  been  more  ap 
preciative.  But  the  young  man  was  a  young  man,  and  his 
most  absorbing  thought  just  now  was  of  himself  and  his 
career. 

It  is  strange  to  me  at  this  present  moment  to  recall  with 
what  a  thrill  of  proud  resolve  Nat  Burke  ascended  his  high 
stool  and  squared  his  elbows  to  his  first  account-book  in 
that  grimy  hole  where  George  Marsh  reigned  supreme. 
For  he  did  reign  there,  as  Nathan  would  have  discovered  in 
less  than  a  day  even  if  he  had  not  had  some  inkling  of  it 
already.  The  old  man  could  not  relinquish  that  heavy  grip 
of  his  gear  he  had  held  all  these  years;  he  was  DUCEY  & 
Co.,  as  his  little  world  of  commerce  more  than  suspected. 
William  Ducey  might  post  his  own  name  over  the  door  as 
big  as  he  pleased,  he  might  be  ever  so  busy  with  his  rustling 
heaps  of  papers,  he  might  bustle  about  with  his  thoughtful  brow, 
he  might  command  and  countermand  twenty  times  an  hour, 
he  was  nothing  but  a  figurehead,  and  we  all  knew  it.  Every 
body  knew  it,  from  the  draymen  rolling  DUCEY  &  Co.'s 
casks  about  on  the  sidewalks  to  the  brokers  and  retail  trades 
men  coming  in  for  their  contracts.  Mr.  Ducey  was  always 
formally  consulted  on  any  business  matter,  and  he  always 
did  as  he  was  told  by  old  George  with  as  good  a  grace  as  he 
could  muster.  Many  people  would  not  have  considered  his 
position  a  hard  one;  there  was  a  handsome  income  from  the 


108  NATHAN   BURKE 

store  and  William  lived  in  excellent  style.  He  belonged  to 
the  Board  of  Trade,  made  a  fine  figure  at  banquets  and  the 
laying  of  corner-stones,  was  an  equally  good  hand  at  making 
punch  and  making  speeches.  What  would  Marsh  have 
looked  like  or  how  would  he  have  acquitted  himself  in  any  of 
these  capacities  ?  The  idea  is  almost  fantastically  comic. 
Mrs.  Ducey  thought  her  husband  the  most  brilliant,  solid, 
able  business-man  and  financier  in  the  country.  What  did 
he  think  of  himself,  I  wonder?  I  have  seen  him  yawning 
secretly  over  those  voluminous  papers  on  his  desk ;  Nat 
Burke  could  cast  up  a  column  of  figures  with  more  readiness, 
despatch,  and  skill  —  to  say  nothing  of  that  ferret-eyed 
young  Quills  yonder  on  his  stool,  with  his  soiled  wristbands 
turned  back  from  his  hands  as  they  travelled  nimbly  up  and 
down  the  ledger  —  young  Quills  who  deferred  to  Mr.  Marsh 
as  to  the  Almighty,  and  sneered  at  Ducey  behind  his  back. 
I  daresay  poor  William  knew  it;  he  was  not  a  dull  man  nor 
a  lazy  man;  more  than  likely  he  chafed  sorely  at  playing 
second-fiddle ;  more  than  likely  he  cherished  his  own  plans 
and  ideas  of  making  money  —  of  how  business  should  be 
conducted.  Once  in  his  absence  a  gale  of  summer  wind  blew 
some  of  the  documents  off  Ducey's  desk,  strewing  them  all 
about  the  floor,  and  Nathan,  who  was  performing  the  duties 
of  an  entry-clerk,  left  his  books  and  descended  from  his  perch 
to  gather  them  up. 

" What's  that  in  your  hand?  Give  it  here,  Nat,"  old 
George  growled  out  suddenly,  looking  up  over  his  glasses  and 
over  the  top  of  the  newspaper  where  he  had  been  studying 
the  New  York  market  report;  and  Nathan  silently  laid  the 
sheaf  of  papers  before  him.  "  Virginia  Lottery,  Wellsburgh, 
Class  I,  draws  at  Alexandria,  Va.,  July  25,  1839.  Scheme 
$30,000,  $20,000,  25  of  1000.  Tickets  $10."  " Maryland 
Consolidated,  Class  II,  draws  at  Baltimore,  Md.,  Aug.  15, 
1839.  Scheme  $20,000-  "  Kentucky  Extra,  Class  IV, 
draws—  '  etc.,  etc.  These  were  some  of  the  headings; 
tickets  were  to  be  had  of  Ichabod  Bernstein.  Such  ingenuous 
notices  were  common  enough  in  those  days;  they  appeared 
in  all  the  journals.  A  fortune  awaited  the  lucky  investor 
of  ten  dollars  in  Wellsburgh,  Class  I,  Kentucky  Extra,  and 
the  rest. 

"Huh!"  grunted  the  old  man;    and  Nat  having  gone  to 


MR.   BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW   START        109 

his  work  again,  Mr.  Marsh  presently  arose  and  himself 
deposited  the  papers  on  their  owner's  desk ;  nor  did  they 
exchange  a  word  on  the  subject  then  or  later. 

Mr.  Burke,  during  the  time  of  his  clerkship  and  for  some 
while  thereafter,  lived  in  a  very  small  way  indeed  at  a  board 
ing-house  in  an  ungenteel  suburb  not  far  from  the  river,  and 
within  easy  distance  of  the  store  where  he  liked  to  arrive  as 
early  in  the  morning  as  Mr.  Marsh,  such  was  his  conception 
of  his  duty.  He  had  one  of  the  cheapest  rooms  of  this  not  at 
all  expensive  establishment,  which  was  kept  by  a  little,  meek, 
white-eyelashed  widow  called  Slaney  —  a  name  which  some 
how  accurately  fits  and  describes  her.  In  time  Nat  got  to 
be  a  sort  of  " trusty "  —  her  oldest  and  most  stable  boarder; 
she  told  him  her  whole  shabby  history,  how  she  had  seen 
better  days,  how  Slaney  had  deserted  her  (for  she  was  what 
Jim  Sharpless  used  to  call  a  brevet-widow,  not  an  actual 
one);  Nathan  heard  all  about  Slaney  —  Slaney  who  had  fallen 
a  victim  to  the  reptilian  wiles  of  a  wicked,  wicked  woman, 
and  not  so  good-looking  either,  whatever  a  man  could  see  in 
her,  the  dear  knows ;  Slaney  who  was  the  soul  of  honor  and 
loved  Mrs.  Slaney  dearly  even  if  he  had  been  led  astray; 
Slaney  who  had  decamped  with  the  other  woman,  absent- 
mindedly  carrying  off  the  contents  of  his  employer's  cash- 
drawer  at  the  same  time;  Slaney  whom  she  loved  still  and 
would  take  back  to-morrow.  She  had  a  daguerreotype 
of  him  on  a  bracket  in  her  dingy  sitting-room  with  a  bunch 
of  immortelles  in  a  pink  tinted  glass  vase  underneath  it,  and 
used  to  cry  over  this  relic  while  she  was  confiding  the  story 
to  Nathan.  It  became  pretty  familiar  to  him  before  he  left 
the  widow's  roof.  "It's  a  great  comfort  to  talk  to  you,  Mr. 
Burke;  you  never  say  a  word  —  so  sympathetic  !"  she  would 
sigh;  "and  you  know  there  ain't  many  I  can  talk  to."  In 
truth  there  were  not;  her  other  lodgers  were  a  floating  crew, 
some  of  whom,  alas,  did  not  pay  her,  and  came  home  tipsy 
and  broke  the  window-panes;  and  Mr.  Burke  knocked  one 
of  these  gentlemen  down  the  steps  and  gave  him  a  black  eye 
for  calling  the  poor  woman  a  hideous  name.  They  were 
most  numerous  when  the  Legislature  was  in  session,  at  which 
time  the  town  was  always  very  crowded  and  active  ;  or  during 
the  terms  of  court  in  our  circuit  when  every  tavern  and 


110  NATHAN   BURKE 

lodging-house  would  be  filled  with  lawyers,  parties,  jurors, 
witnesses,  like  a  kind  of  benevolent  plague  of  locusts.  I  hope 
Mrs.  Slaney  made  her  profit  out  of  them,  but  it  is  much  to 
be  doubted.  She  was  not  a  practical  soul. 

The  stir  that  these  visitors  made  was  felt  in  a  general 
briskening  of  trade  even  by  DUCEY  &  Co.,  whom  one  would 
not  have  supposed  affected  by  their  presence  in  town.  But 
everybody  except  the  Mrs.  Slaney's  drove  a  roaring  business. 
The  billiard-room  clicked  merrily  all  day  long,  for  these 
overworked  legal  laborers  must  have  recreation;  the  coffee 
houses  were  always  in  full  blast  day  and  night  —  the  coffee 
houses  where  coffee  was  the  last  thing  in  the  world  any  one 
would  have  got  or  dreamed  of  asking  for  !  High  Street  was 
lined  throughout  its  length  with  horses  and  vehicles;  the 
old  Court-house  fairly  hummed  with  alert  gentlemen  loaded 
with  green  bags,  calf-skin  volumes,  saddle-bags  crammed 
with  documents.  Hordes  of  fledgling  lawyers  and  law- 
students  flocked  about  the  circuit  at  the  heels  of  the  judges 
and  the  full-blown  attorneys  who  practised  in  a  dozen 
counties,  and  moved  majestically  in  an  orbit  of  cases  coming 
up  for  trial.  Nathan,  hurrying  up  street  from  the  store  with 
a  deposit  for  the  bank,  might  run  into  a  half-score  of  celeb 
rities,  middle-aged  gentlemen  with  white  silk  hats,  looking 
oddly  alike  with  their  strong  features,  their  sonorous  voices, 
their  heavy  laughter,  like  a  separate  and  distinct  race  of 
men,  even  to  the  separate  and  distinct  lawyers'  lingo  in 
which  they  conversed,  and  of  which  the  young  man  caught 
snatches  as  he  passed  along,  with  a  pleased  and  eager  curi 
osity.  There  were  giants  in  those  days  ;  Nathan  sometimes 
heard  the  young  followers  pointing  out  So-and-So  from 
Chillicothe,  Such-a-One  from  Zanesville,  to  one  another  with 
huge  respect  and  admiration;  if  the  great  man  spoke  to  one 
of  them,  the  lucky  lad  would  brag  about  it  a  whole  day 
afterwards  —  "I  was  coming  out  of  the  District- Attorney's 
room  with  Charlie  Green  —  you  know  Charlie  Green  ?  - 
and  I  just  happened  to  say  that  in  that  quo  warranto  action 
against  Buchanan  —  you  know  that  suit  ?  —  in  my  opinion 
the  whole  thing  was  nothing  but  a  piece  of  spite-work  and 
if  I  was  Buchanan's  lawyer,  I'd  tell  him  flat  that  the  law 
was  against  him,  and  just  give  him  a  hint  if  he'd  stay  away 
from  court,  I'd  fix  it  for  him  —  that's  all  he's  got  to  do,  you 


MR.    BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW  START         111 

know,  just  stay  away  from  court,  and  then  when  the  case  is 
called,  I  move  a  postponement,  don't  you  see,  and  of  course 
the  other  side  won't  hear  of  that,  so  then  —  and  just  as  I  got 
that  far  somebody  tapped  me  on  the  shoulder  and  here  it 
was  Hunter  —  you  know  Hocking  Hunter  ?  —  and  says  he, 
with  that  twinkle  in  his  eye  —  you  know  that  twinkle  in  his 
eye  ?  —  '  Young  man,  I  see  what  you're  driving  at !  That, 
sir,  would  be  pettifogging  —  rank  pettifogging  —  -'  just  like 
that  he  said  it,  you  know  that  way  he  has  —  he  had  been 
standing  there,  listening  to  me  —  "  and  so  on  and  so  on  to 
the  deep  and  envious  interest  of  the  other  youths  —  even 
to  Nathan,  who  took  a  singular  delight  in  this  sort  of  dis 
course,  of  which  he  heard  a  good  deal  at  Mrs.  Slaney's  table 
and  elsewhere.  Everybody  knew  everybody;  everybody 
was  everybody's  friend  --a  fact  which  Nat  observed 
with  some  wonder,  having  hitherto  shared  the  nai've  belief 
of  the  layman  who  expects  his  lawyer  to  be  at  daggers 
drawn  with  the  attorney  on  the  opposite  side. 

I  have  said  that  this  legal  activity  brought  trade  to  town, 
even  to  Ducey's;  for  as  court  sat  in  the  closing  weeks  of 
the  year,  besides  the  ordinary  attendance  there  was  always 
a  great  in-pouring  of  farmers  and  country  tradesmen,  all 
of  whom  got  in  their  money  about  this  time,  coming  to  town 
to  buy  or  sell  or  settle  up  accounts.  But  in  fact  the  store 
was  a  busy  place  at  any  season,  during  old  Marsh's  admin 
istration,  and  we  never  lacked  custom.  He  had  a  tremen 
dous  acquaintance  with  all  these  gentry,  attorneys,  brokers, 
pedlers,  drovers,  merchants,  backwoodsmen,  politicians, 
capitalists  —  who  was  there  whom  George  Marsh  did  not 
know  ?  He  was  a  man  of  seventy,  had  lived  in  these  parts 
upwards  of  twenty  years,  and  previous  to  that  had  travelled 
widely  over  the  country  and  seen  the  manners  of  many  men 
and  their  cities.  It  was  an  asset,  that  acquaintance.  Na 
than,  in  the  intervals  of  his  work,  used  to  observe  with  a  keen, 
amused,  and  not  altogether  unsatiric  interest  the  dealings 
of  Mr.  Marsh  with  his  various  clients,  many  of  whom  were 
as  rough  customers  as  he  proclaimed  himself  to  be.  They 
respected  the  old  man;  they  knew  him  to  be  shrewd  and 
close,  yet  on  the  whole  kindly,  and  of  an  invincible  upright 
ness.  They  liked  him  for  his  plain  virtues  of  a  plain  man. 
"That  Ducey  feller's  too  stylish  for  me  —  give  me  Marsh," 


112  NATHAN    BURKE 

Nat  heard  more  than  one  of  them  say.  Plainness  was  greatly 
admired  in  those  days,  and  stylishness  equally  condemned. 
But  George  was  innocent  of  any  design  to  clothe  himself  in 
either  the  one  or  the  other  attribute  ;  he  was  as  nature  made 
him,  with  a  stalwart  dislike  of  shams ;  and,  remarking,  it 
may  be,  some  kindred  trait  in  Burke,  liked  the  young  man 
accordingly. 

"You  know  a  good  deal  about  these  back-country  fellows, 
I  take  notice,  Nathan/'  he  said  approvingly;  "and  you  ain't 
too  fancy  for  'em.  That's  right;  stick  to  that.  Dress  nice, 
mind  your  manners  —  "  said  old  George,  spitting  with  great 
force  and  accuracy — "that's  natural  to  a  young  fellow. 
But  strike  a  balance;  don't  be  too  damn  tony;  but  don't  be 
too  hail-fellow-well-met,  either.  That  sounds  easy,  but  it's 
what  some  people  never  learn,"  he  added,  his  eye  wandering 
quite  by  accident,  I  think,  in  the  direction  of  his  nephew- 
in-law's  desk;  "of  course,  you  can't  treat  every  man  the 
same,  in  one  sense.  You've  noticed,  I  guess,  that  when  it 
comes  to  settin'  'em  up  for  some  of  these  men,  I'm  pretty 
choose-y,  as  you  might  say.  I  give  Ducey  —  Mr.  Ducey, 
I  mean  —  a  hint  to  take  some  of  'em  home  to  dinner  —  and 
there's  others  that  are  a  sight  better  pleased  to  go  up  to  the 
Erin-go-Bragh  with  me,  some  of  the  plug-hat-fancy-vest 
kind,  too.  It  all  depends.  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  I'd  have  to 
get  you  to  do  some  of  this  before  long,  Nat.  I  don't  always 
have  the  time,  and  I  ain't  as  young  as  I  was.  Now  you're 
young,  but  I  guess  you  can  keep  your  head;  you  ain't  had 
any  too  easy  a  row  to  hoe  so  far,  and  I  guess  you've  learned 
some  sense.  I  had  when  I  was  your  age.  And  besides  — 
he  fingered  his  stubbled  chin  for  a  moment,  and  turned  his 
quid  —  "I  reckon,"  he  said  with  a  sudden  sharpness  of  glance, 
"I  reckon  you've  been  through  the  mill,  hey?  I  guess  you 
ain't  any  —  what  d'ye  call  'em  ?  —  any  cherubim,  hey,  Nat  ?  " 
and  seeing  the  young  fellow  redden  and  stammer,  he  grinned 
companionably.  "Lord  love  you,"  he  said  benevolently; 
"I  know  you  ain't  regularly  hell-bent,  like  the  women  think 
because  you  go  into  a  billiard-room  and  take  a  drink  once  in 
a  while.  No,  nor  even  when  you  —  why,  you  see,  you're 
safe  as  long  as  you  know  when  to  call  a  halt,  hey?"  finished 
old  George,  with  unwonted  delicacy,  and  abruptly  changed 
the  subject,  having  indeed  been  much  more  expansive  than 


MR.   BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW  START         113 

was  his  habit.  "Who  was  the  fellow  that  was  in  here  the 
other  day  having  such  a  jaw  with  you?"  he  asked;  "that 
wasn't  Williams  or  Darnell  —  I  know  both  of  them." 

"You  mean  Pascoe,  I  guess,"  Nathan  told  him,  and  smiled 
at  the  recollection.  "He  belongs  up  there  where  I  come 
from  —  I've  known  him  all  my  life.  Pascoe's  got  a  law 
suit  coming  on;  he  wanted  to  tell  me  all  about  it.  He  just 
wanted  to  talk,  you  know ;  you  couldn't  have  stopped  him 
with  a  pick-axe." 

"Law's  tricky,"  observed  Mr.  Marsh,  wisely.  He  tilted 
his  chair  back,  and  pared  off  a  fresh  chew.  "Law's  tricky. 
Most  any  lawyer,  that  ain't  an  out-and-out  shyster  will  advise 
you  to  keep  out  of  a  suit,  and  you  and  I  will  pay  some  atten 
tion  to  him.  But  these  farmers  and  backwoodsmen,  it's  sur 
prising  —  they're  natural-born  fighters.  They've  got  to 
wrestle  so  to  make  a  living  and  keep  body  and  soul  together, 
it  kind  of  gets  in  their  blood.  They  think  they're  bound  to 
win  if  they  hang  on  long  enough  —  so  they  do  hang  on  like 
terriers.  I'll  bet  there  never  was  one  of  'em  yet  that  accepted 
a  compromise.  What's  Pascoe's  trouble?"  Nathan  ex 
plained:  "Some  man  promised  him  a  commission,  he  says, 
if  he'd  sell  some  land  for  him.  So  Pascoe  made  an  effort  to 
sell  it  to  a  neighbor  up  there  in  our  end  of  the  county.  And, 
I  believe,  he  nearly  did  sell  it  —  the  man  was  sort  of  hang 
ing  on  the  edge,  you  know.  Well,  then  along  in  the  spring 
Marshall  —  that's  the  owner's  name  —  died.  News  travels 
pretty  slow  up  there,  and  Pascoe  claims  he  never  heard  a 
word  about  it;  and  here  all  at  once  some  fellow  steps  in  and 
makes  the  sale  to  the  very  man  Pascoe  had  in  view,  and 
Marshall's  heirs  give  him  the  commission.  Naturally, 
Pascoe  wants  to  claim  his  share,  and  that's  where  the  hitch 
comes." 

Old  Marsh  nodded,  chewing  with  a  knit  brow.  "He  has 
a  case,  I  guess,"  he  said.  "Who's  his  lawyer?" 

Nathan  named  him.  "I  hope  they  won't  fight  it  through 
all  the  courts,"  he  said,  for  he  felt  a  natural  concern  for  his 
old  friend.  "Pascoe  hasn't  got  the  money  for  it.  They've 
always  been  a  foot-loose  lot;  never  made  more  than  a  bare 
living,  nor  laid  up  a  cent;"  and  he  told  Mr.  Marsh  about  the 
dam,  as  being  the  thing  most  characteristic  of  Pascoe  he 
knew. 


114  NATHAN    BURKE 

Mr.  Burke  has  rehearsed  this  conversation  and  the  whole 
incident  of  Pascoe's  law-suit  with  a  meticulous  accuracy, 
for  it  actually  influenced  his  entire  life.  Poor  old  Pascoe 
never  knew  it,  nor  did  Burke  himself  realize  it  until  the 
moment  when  he  came  to  set  it  down  in  black  and  white, 
and  was  startled  to  discover  with  what  vividness  the  episode 
returned  upon  him.  That  afternoon  as  he  was  coming  from 
Mrs.  Slaney's  dinner  towards  the  store,  it  being  a  bright,  open 
December  day,  and  the  streets  in  a  pleasant  bustle  of  people, 
he  fell  in  with  Pascoe  and  was  promptly  button-holed  by  his 
ancient  co-worker  in  dam  building  and  dragged  aside  at  the 
corner  of  the  State-house  yard,  where  the  derricks  still  stood, 
and  the  foundations  lingered  unfinished  for  eight  or  ten 
years,  according  to  my  recollection.  "I've  been  to  see  him, 
Nat,"  Pascoe  said,  grasping  the  young  man's  shoulder; 
"'n'  I  told  him  jest  what  you  said — " 

"Good  Lord,  what  did  you  do  that  for?"  ejaculated  Na 
than,  in  dismay.  "I  don't  know  a  thing  about  law  ;  he  wron't 
thank  me  for  sticking  in  my  oar." 

"I  know  you  don't,  I  know  that,  and  so  does  he,"  said 
Pascoe,  impatiently;  "but  I  thought  I  might's  well  tell  him 
becuz  it's  wuth  while  fer  him  to  know  what  a  person  that 
ain't  no  lawyer,  but's  got  plenty  of  jest  plain  horse-sense, 
thinks,  don't  ye  see  ?  So  I  - 

"I  suppose  you  told  him  that,  too,  of  course?"  said  Nat, 
controlling  his  face. 

"Yes.  Yes,  an'  I  told  him  what  you  thunk  about  it,  V 
he  says  th'  pint  is  well  taken,  Nat;  that's  jest  what  he  said. 
'Th'  pint's  well  taken,'  he  says.  '  Yer  young  friend  has  some 
legal  turn,'  he  says;  ' nevertheless,  I  b'lieve  we  kin'  beat 
'em  out,'  he  says.  Look,"  said  Pascoe,  excitedly  clutching 
the  other's  arm,  "there  he  comes  now  —  see  those  three 

—  not  th'  tall  one  —  th'  other's  Gov'nor  Gywnne,  ain't  it 

—  him  that  was  Gov'nor,   I  mean.     My  man's  th'   little 
feller :  on  th'  outside,  with  th'  drab-colored  hat.     He's  a  good 
one,  Nat;  he  b'longs  to  th'  Lancaster  Bar,  ye  know;  they 
ain't  no  better  set  o'  lawyers  in  th'  State  of  Ohio  —  ner  in 
th'  hull  United  States,  I  don't  believe  !" 

1  The  name  of  this  gentleman  is  given ;  but  as  he  left  many  de 
scendants,  who  hold  his  memory  in  great  and  deserved  honor,  it  has 
been  thought  best,  although  the  incident  can  hardly  be  considered 


MR.   BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW   START         115 

Nat  thought  that  if  the  gentleman  belonged  to  the  Lan 
caster  Bar,  it  certainly  was  not  the  bar  from  which  he  had 
most  recently  come.  He  was  short  and  stout,  yet  with  a 
sort  of  heavy  activity  in  his  step,  which  might  have  been 
a  little  steadier,  perhaps.  But  although  his  strongly  marked 
face  was  flushed  and  his  laughter  pretty  ready,  he  contrived 
somehow  to  be  slightly  drunk  without  much  loss  of  dignity. 
There  was  a  jolly  strength  about  him,  a  relaxed  and  jovial 
power.  Nathan  knew  Governor  Gwynne,  as  did  every  one 
else  in  town,  by  sight  at  least.  Nat  had  often  seen  him  in 
church,  and  two  or  three  times  at  the  Ducey  house,  where 
his  family  visited.  And  the  other,  a  very  tall  man,  as  tall 
as  Governor  Gwynne,  but  fleshier,  and  so  dark  of  complex 
ion  that  he  might  almost  have  been  taken  for  a  negro,  was  a 
familiar  figure  on  our  streets,  being  fairly  sure,  it  was  sup 
posed,  of  the  nomination  for  governor  next  year  on  the  Whig 
ticket,  and  a  most  agreeable,  conversational,  plain-mannered, 
and  popular  gentleman.  "He's  a  leetle  how-come-you-so, 
jest  a  leetle  —  it's  nothin',  they  all  drink  more  or  less.  I 
tell  ye  he's  a  big  one,  one  of  th'  biggest  they've  got,"  whis 
pered  Pascoe,  with  eyes  of  awe  on  his  counsel.  "There, 
Nat,  he's  lookin'  right  this  way  —  he  saw  me  —  see  him 
wave  his  hand!"  said  Pascoe,  pleasantly  excited  by  this 
signal,  and  not  in  the  least  shocked  or  put  about  by  his  man- 
of-law's  departure  from  the  paths  of  temperance.  Pascoe 
himself  was  as  seasoned  a  drinker  as  I  ever  knew ;  he  was  a 
little,  hard,  knotty  man  who  lived  to  an  inordinate  old  age, 
something  like  ninety  or  a  hundred,  in  complete  refutation 
of  the  theory  that  the  use  of  tobacco  and  stimulants  tends  to 
shorten  the  life  of  man. 

"I  guess  I'd  better  be  getting  along  to  the  store,  Pascoe," 
said  Nat,  observing  that  this  trio  was  bearing  down  in  their 
direction,  and  not  feeling  particularly  anxious  for  notice; 
"let  me  know  when  your  case  comes  on  to  be  tried  — " 

"  Don't  you  want  to  see  him  ?  "  said  Pascoe,  with  something 
of  the  showman's  pride.  "Sho,  Nat,  you  ain't  'fraid  of  'em, 

discreditable,  to  omit  it.  And  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  habit 
of  strong  drink  never  did  "get  him,"  as  Governor  Corwin  is  here 
reported  to  have  prophesied.  He  outlived  both  his  companions  on 
this  walk  by  a  score  of  years,  dying  in  1892  at  a  fine  old  age,  and  kept 
the  esteem  and  regard  of  his  fellow-citizens  to  the  last.  —  M.  S.  W. 


116  NATHAN   BURKE 

are  ye  ?  Why,  I'm  layin'  off  to  vote  fer  Corwin  —  And  the 
party  having  by  this  time  got  abreast  of  them,  to  Nathan's 
consternation,  the  short  man  swung  about,  and  marched 
directly  for  him  and  his  companion,  the  two  others  halting 
with  a  good  deal  of  smiling  interest  a  little  distance  away. 

"  Is  zat  young  man,  Pascal  —  Pass  —  hie  —  Passover  ?  " 
inquired  the  lawyer ;  and  Pascoe  assenting,  he  lifted  his  high 
silk  hat  with  prodigious  gravity  to  the  astonished  Nathan, 
and  replaced  it  over  one  eye.  "  Young  man,  shake  ban's. 
'Oh,  wise,  young  zudge,  how  do  I  honor  thee!'  Gwynne, 
zish  young  man.  Tell  gem'men  what  you  said  in  case  of 
Pass  —  Pass  —  damn  it  —  Pass  — 

"  You'd  better  pass,  I  think,"  said  the  dark  man,  with  a 
laugh;  " I'll  take  the  deal.  Are  you  the  Daniel,  sir  ?  What's 
your  name?" 

" Burke  —  Nathan  Burke,"  said  Nat,  out  of  countenance, 
yet  moved  with  inward  laughter. 

" Nathan,  hey?"  interrupted  the  lawyer.  He  smote  Nat  a 
blow  on  the  chest  that  almost  took  the  breath  out  of  him, 
whereat  the  other  burst  into  a  loud  laugh.  "'Thou  art  the 
man!' "  he  said,  and  passed  an  arm  around  the  young  fellow's 
shoulders,  leaning  on  him  affectionately.  "Shay,"  he  said 
intimately,  "you  told  Passport  he  couldn't  have  a  contract 
with  a  dead  person,  didn't  you?  Told  him  death  ought  to 
dissolve  'greement,  didn't  you  ?  Smart  boy  —  go  up  'head ! " 
he  chucked  Nathan  under  the  chin.  "Who  told  you,  hey  ?" 

"Nobody.     I  just  guessed  at  it,"  said  Nat,  holding  him  up. 

"You  hear  zat,  Gov'nor?"  asked  the  lawyer,  tenderly 
solicitous.  Governor  Gwynne,  who  was  a  man  of  formal 
appearance  and  accounted  pretty  stiff  by  those  who  knew 
him,  looked  at  him  resignedly. 

"Did  you  advise  Mr.  —  ah  —  this  gentleman's  client,  as 
he  has  intimated,  Mr.  —  urn  —  Burke  ?  "  he  asked  with  a 
chilly  civility. 

"Yes,  but  I  don't  know  anything  about  the  law  —  I  was 
only  talking,"  Nat  explained.  "I  know  more  about  other 
things,"  he  added  with  a  grin,  skilfully  steadying  his  newly 
acquired  friend. 

"Zat  is  cut  at  me  —  most  unkindest  cut  of  all,"  said  the 
latter,  with  entire  good-nature.  "Oh,  I  know  I'm  drunk,  but 
I  ain't  so  very  drunk.  Why,  if  I  was  very  drunk,  Sam 


MR.   BURKE   MAKES   A   NEW  START         117 

Gwynne  wouldn't  be  seen  on  the  street  with  me  !  Zash  how 
I  know.  Tom  would,  wouldn't  you,  Tom  ?  Goo'  old  Tom  ! 
Are  you  going  to  vote  for  Tom,  young  man?" 

"I  shan't  be  voting  for  anybody  for  a  year  or  so  yet/' 
said  Nathan,  trying  ineffectually  to  back  away. 

"What?  You  don't  say  so!"  exclaimed  the  dark  man,  in 
surprise.  "Why,  you  look  twenty-five!" 

"Zash  load  off  Tom's  mind  —  he  don't  have  to  shake 
hands  with  you,"  said  the  lawyer,  cynically. 

"Oh,  you  go  to  the  devil !"  said  Tom,  half  laughing,  half 
annoyed;  and  he  put  out  his  hand.  "I  want  to  shake 
hands  with  you,  Burke,  if  for  nothing  but  to  disprove  that. 
You  are  studying  law?  Whose  office  are  you  in?" 

"Oh,  no,  I'm  not  —  I'm  clerking  for  Mr.  Marsh  — 
DUCEY  &  Co.,  you  know,"  said  Nathan,  a  little  shyly, 
wondering  within  him  at  the  politician's  smooth  assumption 
of  interest. 

"Ah?  My  advice  to  you,  sir,  would  be  to  study  law  — 
nothing  derogatory  to  Mr.  Marsh's  pursuits,  of  course. 
Mr.  Marsh  is  a  very  old  and  good  friend  of  mine.  But  the 
law  offers  a  great  career  to  a  young  man.  Wre  should  hear 
from  you,  sir,  I  make  no  doubt.  Good-day,  Mr.  —  er  — 
he  shook  hands  with  Pascoe,  who  was  quite  proud,  confused, 
and  happy.  "I  should  have  liked  to  think,  Mr.  Burke,  that 
I  might  depend  on  you  at  the  polls,"  he  concluded  with  an 
admirable  show  of  warmth. 

"I  guess  I'll  have  a  chance  some  other  time,  Mr.  Corwin," 
said  Nat,  not  to  be  outdone. 

"Zat's  right,  m'boy,"  said  the  lawyer,  with  a  grin  so  know 
ing  it  made  the  young  man's  face  flush.  And  as  the  others 
moved  on  he  hooked  his  elbow  within  Nathan's  confidentially. 
"You  heard  what  old  Tom  said?  Shay,  it  —  hie  —  it 
wasn't  all  gammon,  you  know.  Study  law,  hey,  why  don't 
you  ?  "  He  released  Nat  at  last  and  addressed  him  profoundly. 
"I  am  not  merry,"  said  he,  wagging  his  head.  "I  do  beguile 
the  thing  I  am  by  seeming  otherwise.  I  could  never  better 
stead  thee  than  now  —  Put  money  in  thy  purse;  go  to 
these  wars  —  no,  damn  it,  thash  not  what  I  mean  —  study 
law  !  I  say  —  hie  —  put  money  in  thy  purse  !  Thou  shalt 
see  an  answerable  sequestration.  Put  money  in  thy  purse. 
If  thou  wilt  needs  damn  thyself,  do  it  a  more  delicate  way 


118  NATHAN   BURKE 

than  clerking  !  Fill  thy  purse  with  money.  Traverse ! 
Go  !  Adieu  !"  He  gave  Nat  another  staggering  thump  on 
the  back  this  time,  burst  into  another  thunderous  laugh, 
and  swaggered  off  down  the  street,  his  hat  on  one  side,  shout 
ing  after  the  others. 

"Criminy!  I  hope  he  don't  git  spells  like  that  often,"  said 
Pascoe,  staring  after  his  legal  adviser  a  little  dubiously; 
"'peared  to  me  that  last  he  said  wan't  good  sense.  He  must 
'a'  been  more  drammy  than  I  took  him  fer." 

"It  was  sense  —  it  was  out  of  a  play.  I've  read  it,"  said 
Nat,  beginning  to  laugh  in  his  turn.  He  went  on  to  the 
store,  passing  the  ex-governor  and  Corwin  awhile  later  on 
one  of  his  errands,  as  they  stood  with  a  knot  of  others.  Their 
backs  were  towards  him,  and  Nat  was  glad  to  go  unnoticed. 
"No,  he's  not  drinking  enough  to  hurt  him  yet"  he  overheard 
the  dark  man  say;  "but  it'll  get  him  in  the  end  —  it  always 
gets  'em,  you  know."  And  Nathan  heard  the  rest  grunt 
assent. 

Whether  Burke's  next  action  had  in  reality  been  meditated 
a  long  while  in  some  obscure  corner  of  his  mind,  and  it  needed 
only  a  word  like  Corwin's  or  his  semi-drunken  friend's  to 
bring  the  plan  out  into  the  open,  as  it  were,  for  more  rigid 
examination,  or  whether  he  acted  on  a  sudden  and  powerful 
impulse,  I  can  scarcely  tell,  although  the  latter  would  have 
been  unlike  him.  He  went  into  Mr.  Riley's  bookstore  that 
evening  and  asked  rather  diffidently  for  a  copy  of  "Walker's 
Introduction  to  American  Law,"  and  carried  the  book 
home,  and  burned  out  his  meagre  fire  and  Mrs.  Slaney's 
candle,  sitting  up  till  an  outrageously  late  hour,  so  that  he 
went  to  bed  at  last  shivering,  in  the  dark. 


CHAPTER  IX 

EXORITUR  CLAMOR  VIRUM 

A  DEAL  of  water  has  gone  under  the  bridges  since  the  year 
1840,  when  young  Nat  Burke  saw  his  first  presidential 
campaign.  Of  all  the  hot  questions  of  that  day,  only  one 
survives :  the  tariff  —  evidence,  I  suppose,  that  truth  and 
error  are,  poets  and  sages  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
of  an  equal  vitality.  Our  State  was  strongly  Whig,  as  it  is 
now,  —  the  rose  by  another  name  smells  just  as  sweet,  —  and 
so  most  of  us  were  protectionists,  although,  indeed,  we  did 
not  do  near  so  much  talking  about  protection  as  nowadays, 
nor  label  our  views  with  that  name.  No,  the  tariff,  if  we  have 
always  had  it  with  us,  was  at  that  time  a  kind  of  sleeping  dog 
which  we  generally  let  lie;  what  we  bawled  and  shook  our 
fists  over  was  the  criminal  mismanagement,  the  hideous 
profligacy  of  the  party  in  power,  the  V.B.'s,  as  we  referred  to 
them,  using  the  initials  of  their  leader  and  candidate  to 
evince  our  indignant  disapproval.  They  called  themselves 
Democrats  in  infamous  profanation  of  a  title  which  in  the  old 
glorious  days  of  the  Republic  stood  for  everything  that  was 
high  and  noble !  Oh,  how  have  we  fallen  from  that  great 
estate,  my  friends,  when  a  Van  Buren  can  etc.,  etc.  Will 
Mr.  Van  Buren  say  —  will  he,  in  the  face  of  proof,  DENY  — 
will  our  friends,  the  loco-focos  dare  to  affirm  —  gentlemen,  I 
pause  for  a  reply ! 

And  lucky  he  did  pause,  for  he  was  in  imminent  danger 
of  bursting  a  blood-vessel!  Burke,  skirting  the  crowds  at 
the  corners,  or  dodging  through  them  in  the  State-house  yard, 
where  the  orator  would  be  perched  on  a  horse-block,  a  cart, 
a  bit  of  masonry,  or  any  other  handy  elevation,  would  catch 
fragments  like  the  above  hurtling  through  the  air  and  a 
glimpse  of  a  red-faced  man,  gesticulating  over  the  heads  and 
bellowing  whole-heartedly.  Nobody  ever  did  reply,  our 
friends  the  loco-focos  (which,  being  another  term  for  the 

119 


120  NATHAN    BURKE 

V.B.'s  was  always  pronounced  in  a  tone  of  mingled  disgust 
and  contempt,  as  who  should  say,  the  noxious  reptiles)  never 
affirmed,  Mr.  Van  Buren,  secure  in  the  White  House  a  thou 
sand  miles  away,  never  denied,  and  so  the  speaker  swept  on 
unhindered  to  a  triumphant  conclusion.  Everybody  was 
enthusiastically  advised,  persuaded,  adjured  to  save  the 
country  and  vote  for  the  FARMER  OF  NORTH  BEND  !  And 
as  nobody  had  ever  had  the  slightest  intention  of  voting- 
otherwise,  we  all  used  to  go  home  perfectly  satisfied  — 
especially  those  patriots  who  made  a  point  of  getting  drunk, 
or  of  picking  their  fellow-patriots'  pockets  on  these  occa 
sions.  Was  ever  any  man  yet  converted  by  a  stump- 
speech?  I  cannot  believe  it.  We  want  to  hear  our  own 
opinions  announced  and  confirmed,  not  to  listen  to  the  other 
man's.  Once  in  a  while  the  orator  would  be  a  Democrat, 
fluent,  trumpet-throated,  challenging  the  opposite  party  to 
affirm  or  deny,  and  pausing  for  a  reply  like  the  rest.  They 
used  to  collect  a  fair-sized  audience,  too,  and  doubtless  made 
just  as  much  of  an  impression  upon  those  who  came,  choos 
ing  to  be  impressed,  and  none  whatever  upon  the  others. 
The  V.B.'s  had  the  advantage  —  if  it  was  an  advantage  — 
of  a  platform,  one  of  the  first,  if  not  the  first,  I  think,  that  was 
ever  formulated,  wherein  their  political  creed  was  set  forth 
in  condensed  and  distinct  terms;  they  adopted  it  at^  their 
convention  in  Baltimore  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  and  it  was 
sent  about  and  published  in  all  the  papers  afterwards,  to  our 
great  interest  and  edification.  The  Whigs,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  none,  and  contented  themselves  with  a  wholesale 
and  pretty  rabid  denunciation  of  things  as  they  were,  and 
a  promise  of  better.  And,  on  the  whole,  I  do  not  know  but 
that  a  piece  of  hearty,  thoroughgoing  vituperation  serves  more 
with  the  mob  than  the  most  subtle  and  unanswerable  argu 
ment,  if  either  one  of  them  has  any  effect  at  all.  The  dema 
gogue  has  his  uses  and  gets  from  me  an  unwilling  admiration. 
There  were  plenty  of  them  on  both  sides;  but  from  the  be 
ginning  the  Whigs  had  the  best  of  it  with  us,  as  was  natural 
with  a  candidate  who  hailed  from  our  own  State  —  although 
that  does  not  always  count,  for  four  years  later  Tennessee 
went  solid  against  her  native  Polk,  as  I  remember,  and  there 
are  probably  other  instances.  But  Harrison  ^  enjoyed  a 
tremendous  personal  popularity;  the  old  warrior,  retired 


EXORITUR  CLAMOR   VIRUM  121 

in  his  virtuous  poverty,  living  upon  his  own  acres,  offered  a 
picture  singularly  pleasing  to  the  republican  mind ;  there  was 
about  it  a  frugal  and  classic  dignity.  And  with  that  strange 
inconsistency  which  men  will  display  in  the  mass  and  yet 
individually  condemn,  as  jealous  as  we  were  of  the  standing 
army,  as  fearful  of  its  potential  evil,  the  soldier-hero  candi 
date  was  the  one  we  almost  invariably  elected. 

It  was  little  enough  that  Mr.  Burke  knew  of  the  merits  of 
either  political  system  at  this  time ;  and  little  enough  that 
anybody  cared  about  his  opinions.  What  to  him  was  friend 
or  foeman  ?  He  was  too  young  to  cast  his  ballot  at  the  black 
smith's,  carpenters'  shops,  and  feed-stores,  where  the  polling- 
booths  were  usually  set  up;  he  could  only  look  on,  speculate, 
wonder,  and  exchange  his  immature  views  with  other  young 
fellows  in  like  case.  He  used  to  listen,  not  indeed  to  the 
street-corner  enthusiasts,  —  Nat  had  no  time  for  them,  — 
but  to  the  solid,  middle-aged  or  elderly  men  who  always 
glanced  aside  from  business  to  talk  over  the  political  outlook 
when  they  came  in  to  see  Mr.  Marsh.  Trade  was  a  little 
dull,  as  it  often  is  during  the  Presidential  campaign  (which 
falls  in  the  same  year  as  the  gubernatorial  with  us),  so  that 
everybody  had  leisure  for  discussions.  The  only  thing  that 
kept  them  from  being  more  animated  was  the  fact  that  almost 
all  these  old  boys  were  of  the  same  mind;  they  raged  together 
over  the  same  abuses,  growled  or  shouted  at  one  another  the 
same  savage  condemnation  of  our  currency  system,  which, 
to  tell  the  truth,  was  sufficiently  loose  and  ill-ordered  and 
had  occasioned  them  all  at  one  time  or  another  serious  in 
convenience  and  loss,  and  were  very  strong  upon  the  restric 
tion  of  the  executive  powers.  Old  George  himself  was  a 
Whig — "But  I  ain't  expecting  the  millennium  if  Harrison 
comes  in,"  he  remarked  to  Nathan;  "Fve  seen  too  many 
changes  of  party  for  that.  I  voted  for  Adams  in  '96.  This 
country's  big  and  it's  changing  —  changing  all  the  time. 
What's  good  this  year  may  be  bad  ten  years  from  now.  And 
what's  good  for  some  States  is  sure  to  be  not  so  good  for 
some  others  —  thet's  where  the  hitch  comes.  You've  got 
to  get  down  to  some  bed-rock  principles,  and  for  the  rest  of 
it  strike  a  balance.  Now  Harrison's  an  honest  man,  I  guess 
he  was  a  pretty  good  general  —  no  reason  why  he  shouldn't 
make  a  good  President.  Most  men  are  about  as  intelligent 


122  NATHAN   BURKE 

as  they  are  honest;  and  you'll  find  that  no  matter  how  smart 
a  scoundrel  is,  he's  a  fool  at  the  core,  after  all.  I  take  notice 
we've  never  had  a  scoundrel  for  a  President  yet  —  we've 
had  honest  men  making  some  terribly  bad  mistakes,  that's 
all.  The  country  ain't  going  to  the  dogs,  like  you  hear 
people  say,  if  Van  Buren's  reflected;  personally  I'm  opposed 
to  the  policy  he  stands  for,  and  I  hope  he  won't  be." 

Nathan  looked  at  him  musingly,  struck  with  a  sudden 
idea:  "It's  odd  to  think  that  you're  not  American  born,  Mr. 
Marsh,"  he  said;  "nobody'd  know  it  to  hear  you." 

"Well,  I  got  transplanted  pretty  young,"  said  the  old 
man,  smiling  a  little;  "I  was  just  about  your  age  —  no,  a 
little  older,  I  guess.  And  a  man  ain't  any  good  to  his  coun 
try,  nor  his  country  to  him  till  he's  that  old.  I've  been 
here  fifty  years  —  made  all  my  money  here  —  made  all  my 
friends  here.  The  old  country  ain't  anything  to  me  now  — 
it's  inevitable  you  should  take  up  with  the  land  and  the  peo 
ple  where  your  home  is ;  you  can't  help  it.  Of  course  you 
don't  hear  me  blowing  around  about  British  encroachment, 
and  giving  the  old  country  a  black  eye  whenever  I  get  the 
chance;  but,  Nat,  you  don't  hear  any  sensible  person  doing 
that,  anyhow,  no  difference  where  they  come  from.  You 
think  it's  funny,  I  suppose,  that  I  should  be  such  a  strong 
Harrison  man  when  Harrison  licked  the  boots  off  the  British 
up  there  at  Tippecanoe,  hey?"  he  added,  and  reading  a 
surprised  and  rather  abashed  consent  in  the  other's  face, 
began  to  laugh.  "That's  a  good  while  ago,"  he  said,  flour 
ishing  his  hand;  "I'm  willing  to  let  by-gones  be  by-gones. 
Lord  love  you,  Nat,  I'm  doing  a  deal  more  for  Harrison  than 
vote  for  him,  and  you  know  it.  Did  you  send  that  check 
to  the  committee  ?  It  was  fifty  dollars,  wasn't  it  ?  When 
are  they  going  to  have  the  demonstration  ?  Three  or  four 
weeks,  ain't  it?" 

"Washington's  Birthday,"  Nat  told  him;  "I  suppose  that's 
the  earliest  they  could  have  it  on  account  of  the  roads. 
They're  pretty  bad  this  time  of  year ;  and  they're  expecting 
people  from  all  over  the  State,  you  know.  Why,  even  Mrs. 
Slaney's  had  letters  asking  for  rooms  !" 

Old  George  nodded.  "Fifty  dollars  ought  to  drape  the 
whole  damn  town  in  bunting,  seems  to  me,"  he  said.  "But 
I  ain't  the  only  one.  They've  asked  everybody  for  a  sub- 


EXORITUR   CLAMOR   VIRUM  123 

scription.  I'll  bet  Sam  Gwynne  went  down  into  his  breeches' 
pocket.  The  Supreme  Bench  would  about  suit  Sam,  if  he 
could  get  there;  and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  he  did  this  time, 
being  a  personal  friend  of  the  general's.  Sam's  always 
making  a  great  bid  for  popularity,  and  yet  somehow  he's 
never  been  very  popular,  after  all." 

"  They're  going  to  have  a  big  shindy  at  the  demonstration," 
Nathan  observed;  "one  of  the  boys  from  Barlow  Brothers 
was  in  the  other  day,  and  he  told  me  they  had  a  pile  of  ban 
ners  as  high  as  the  ceiling  got  ready  to  stretch  across  the  street, 
with  'One  Term'  and  'Union  for  the  sake  of  the  Union' 
and  'The  Constitution  and  its  Defenders'  on  'em." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  Mr.  Marsh,  rubbing  his  chin; 
"  anything  that  brings  people  here's  good  for  the  town,  I  guess 
—  good  for  business  —  still  — 

"Why,  won't  we  have  to  shut  up  ?" 

"  Wouldn't  wonder.  On  the  twenty-second,  anyhow.  I've 
had  about  forty  people  ask  for  places  to  see  the  parade  —  at 
the  upstairs  windows,  you  know.  Mrs.  Ducey  wants  to 
bring  a  party  down  —  big  mistake  to  my  notion,  women  and 
children  in  a  crowd  like  that,  full  of  drunken  men  and  Lord 
knows  what  besides.  'Tain't  safe;  I  told  Anne  so.  But 
the  next  thing  you  know  she'd  got  a  plan  to  take  the  carriage 
and  horses  — ' 

"  Good  Heavens  ! "  ejaculated  Nathan,  perturbed.  He  had 
had  trouble  with  the  horses,  who  were  a  spirited  pair,  during 
his  administration,  and,  as  is  not  uncommonly  the  case, 
doubted  any  other  man's  ability  to  manage  them. 

"Yes,  and  drive  around  to  the  corner  of  Long  and  High, 
and  watch  the  procession  from  there,  because  it  would  be  so 
much  the  best  way  to  see  it,  sitting  in  the  carriage!  'The 
devil  it  would!'  says  I.  'You'd  better  come  to  the  store, 
after  all,  I  guess.'  And  then,  by  damn,  Burke,  she  says: 
'  Why,  Uncle  George,  how  you  do  chop  and  change  around  ! 
You  said  you  didn't  want  us  to  come  to  the  store!'  Ho, 
ho!" 

Nathan  had  to  join  in  the  other's  laugh;  he  could  almost 
hear  Mrs.  Ducey.  Yet  it  was  with  a  good  deal  of  concern 
that  he  said:  "She  oughtn't  to  do  that,  Mr.  Marsh.  Can't 
you  stop  her  ?  You  can't  depend  on  those  horses,  and  there'll 
be  yelling  and  singing  and  commotion  and  two  or  three  brass 


124  NATHAN   BURKE 

bands,  and  somebody  told  me  they  were  going  to  have  some 
kind  of  floats  with  log-cabins,  —  imitation  ones,  I  mean,  — 
and  a  whole  lot  more  foolishness.  It'll  be  enough  to  drive 
any  horse  crazy." 

"  You  might  tell  her  that  yourself,  if  you  think  it'll  do  any 
good/'  said  Mr.  Marsh,  coolly;  "she  says  she  knows  any 
number  of  people  who  are  going  to  see  it  that  way;  and  the 
horses  are  perfectly  safe!  ' That's  a  mistake,'  says  I;  'you 
can  bank  on  it  there  ain't  any  safe  horses;  there's  a  few  safe 
drivers,  and  I  don't  know  whether  this  young  Williams  fellow 
is  one  of  'em  or  not.'  But  it  seems  George  is  going  to  drive; 
they  won't  have  room  for  anybody  but  the  family." 

"George!" 

"That's  what  I'm  told.  I  said,  'Well,  that's  all  right  if, 
after  you  get  there,  you'll  have  the  horses  taken  out  and  led 
around  to  the  back  of  the  square,  or  somewhere  where  they'll 
be  out  of  the  fuss.'  She  said  —  He  paused  to  bite  off  a 
chew. 

"  That  would  be  safe,"  said  Nat,  in  relief.   "  Did  she  say — ?  " 

"She  said  lH'm!'"  said  old  George,  grinning. 

The  Log-Cabin-and-Hard-Cider  enthusiasts  were  not  the 
only  ones,  however,  who  approached  Mr.  Marsh  for  support 
and  contributions.  There  was  already  a  third  party  in  the 
field,  destined  to  play  a  much  greater  role  in  our  national 
affairs  than  any  of  us  supposed.  For  one  day,  as  Nathan 
was  occupied  at  his  desk,  Mr.  Ducey  overwhelmingly  busy 
amongst  his  papers  as  usual,  and  Marsh  sitting  in  his  cus 
tomary  chair  behind  them,  with  his  feet  under  the  stove  which 
was  introduced  into  the  little  back  office  during  the  winter 
months,  there  walked  in  a  body  of  important-looking  gentle 
men,  headed  by  one  with  a  black  coat,  a  white  neckcloth,  and 
a  long,  harsh-featured,  and  coffin-shaped  face  in  whom  Nat 
recognized  Doctor  Sharpless,  a  divine  of  the  Presbyterian 
church,  where  the  young  man  sometimes  —  I  was  about  to  say 
worshipped,  but  I  fear  that  is  not  what  Mr.  Burke  did.  He 
used  to  go  in  diffidently  of  a  Sunday  morning  and  take  a  seat 
at  the  rear,  in  a  rather  dark  corner,  whence  he  could  steal  un 
observed  before  the  sermon  began  or  fall  comfortably  asleep 
during  its  progress,  waking  up  inopportunely  sometimes  with 
a  snort  and  a  jerk  and  conscious  of  a  ghastly  break  in  Mr. 


EXORITUR   CLAMOR   VIRUM  125 

Sharpless's  eloquence,  while  the  reverend  gentleman  who, 
fortunately,  was  quite  near-sighted,  peered  in  his  direction. 
Yet  the  doctor's  sermons  were  by  no  means  soothing  in  their 
substance;  the  nether  fires  blazed  in  them;  the  worm  that 
dieth  not  was  incredibly  active;  Retribution,  punishment, 
awful  and  eternal,  Mr.  Sharpless  brandished  at  his  congrega 
tion  and  dinned  into  the  ears  of  his  God.  Nathan  —  and 
this,  sad  to  say,  was  the  profane  employment  in  which  he 
spent  most  of  his  waking  hours  during  the  service  —  used  to 
study  the  backs  of  the  two  feminine  Sharplesses  as  they  sat 
in  the  ministerial  pew  directly  beneath  the  pulpit  and  wonder 
if  those  gentle,  quiet,  and  sweet-faced  women,  particularly 
the  younger  one,  the  daughter  with  her  devoutly  drooped  head 
and  long,  dark,  shadowy  lashes,  had  to  suffer  this  incendiary 
oratory  all  day  long.  It  was  frightful  to  imagine  what  the 
smallest  peccadillo  might  entail,  were  it  committed  under  Mr. 
Sharpless's  eye.  When  he  stalked  in  at  the  head  of  his  fellows, 
"Powers  above!"  thought  Nat;  "he  can't  be  going  to  haul 
old  George  up  before  the  judgment  seat ! "  For  it  was  impos 
sible  to  divest  the  minister  of  his  professional  solemnity;  and 
equally  impossible  to  figure  either  a  curse  or  a  blessing  taking 
any  effect  on  old  Mr.  Marsh.  The  latter,  in  fact,  upon  seeing 
the  party,  grunted  a  welcome,  got  up  without  any  appearance 
of  concern,  and  shook  hands  all  around  as  if  they  had  been 
ordinary  sinners  like  himself.  And  when  he  sat  down  again, 
and  asked  what  he  could  do  for  them,  looking  them  over 
meanwhile  with  his  shrewd,  not  unkindly  eyes,  with  his  heavy 
fists  planted  on  the  arms  of  his  chair,  he  dominated  even  Mr. 
Sharpless.  What  he  could  do  for  them,  it  appeared,  was, 
I  daresay,  what  Mr.  Marsh  had  expected  —  he  could  subscribe 
to  the  campaign  fund  of  the  Abolition  Party,  which  this  com 
mittee  represented.  Nathan,  arrested  by  the  words,  listened 
in  spite  of  himself.  It  was  the  first  time  he  had  heard  of  that 
party,  their  principles  not  being  at  all  widespread,  nor  the 
subject  of  much  discussion  in  those  days. 

"In  the  convention  held  at  Warsaw,  New  York  State,  last 
November,  Mr.  Marsh,"  explained.  Mr.  Sharpless,  coughing 
and  drawing  a  severe  document  from  the  tail-pocket  of  his 
black  coat,  "our  party  nominated,  as  you  probably  know, 
Mr.  James  G.  Birney  of  New  York  for  President  — " 

"I  know  Birney,"  said  old  Marsh,  briefly. 


126  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Ah?  And  for  Vice-president  Francis  J.  Lemoyne  of 
Pennsylvania,  both  men  who  would  be  an  honor  to  any  cause. 
Mr.  Marsh—  " 

"I  thought  they'd  declined  ?"  said  Mr.  Marsh,  in  a  tone  of 
amiable  inquiry. 

"They  have  signified  that  intention  —  but,  Mr.  Marsh, 
they  cannot  decline,  they  will  not  be  allowed  to  decline. 
Ours  is  a  sacred  cause,  a  holy  cause,  the  cause  of  freedom,  of 
righteousness,  of  humanity  —  no  man  can  refuse  the  privilege 
of  being  standard-bearer  to  such  a  cause,"  said  Sharpless,  with 
energy,  the  color  coming  into  his  long,  pale  face,  quite  uncon 
scious  of  either  humor  or  irony  in  his  statement.  "  If  you  will 
allow  me  to  read  you  the  resolutions  passed  at  the  convention  " 
—  he  opened  the  paper  and  began  to  read  in  the  same  loud, 
resonant,  and  determined  voice  in  which  he  delivered  the  err 
ing  over  to  everlasting  damnation  every  Sunday  —  "'every 
consideration  of  duty  and  expediency  which  ought  to  control 
the  action  of  Christian  freemen  requires  of  the  Abolitionists 
of  the  United  States  to  organize  a  distinct  and  independent 
political  party,  embracing  all  the  necessary  means  for  nomi 
nating  candidates  for  office  and  sustaining  them  by  public 
suffrage  — 

Old  Marsh  listened  in  silence,  rubbing  his  chin;  Ducey 
yawned  behind  his  hand,  and  presently  got  up,  excusing  him 
self,  and  went  into  the  outer  store  with  some  vague  murmur 
about  waiting  on  a  customer;  Nathan  went  back  to  his 
ledger,  not  much  impressed.  Only  twenty  years  more  and 
the  guns  would  be  roaring  at  Gettysburg  and  Antietam,  and 
the  death-lists  coming  up  every  morning,  and  what  wretched 
crop  of  tears  and  misery  and  bitter  hatred  should  we  reap 
from  our  forefathers'  wretched  sowing!  We  were  not  dream 
ing  of  that  in  Mr.  Marsh's  little,  dingy  office  that  gray  Janu 
ary  morning  of  1840  while  we  listened  to  Mr.  Sharpless  read; 
one  member  of  the  committee  had  a  cold  and  punctuated 
the  discourse  with  trumpet-like  brayings  into  a  pale  yellow 
bandanna  handkerchief,  I  remember.  Nat  heartily  wished 
they  would  wind  up  the  business,  get  whatever  "necessary 
means  "  they  could  out  of  old  George,  and  go  their  ways.  The 
young  man  thought  Mr.  Sharpless's  fierce  enthusiasm  a  little 
discredited  his  cause;  he  was  one  of  the  fanatics,  headlong, 
impractical,  somewhat  —  to  be  frank  —  somewhat  bloody- 


EXORITUR   CLAMOR   VIRUM  127 

minded,  without  whom  no  great  movement  is  ever  accom 
plished. 

"  What  do  we  expect  to  do  ?"  he  echoed  when  Mr.  Marsh 
had  risen  and,  taking  out  his  check-book,  gone  over  to  his 
desk,  which  he  did  rather  to  Nathan's  surprise,  after  a  very 
little  talk;  "what  do  we  expect  to  do?  Why  —  why,  can 
you  ask  that,  Mr.  Marsh  ?  You've  lived  in  the  South,  you've 
witnessed  the  iniquities  of  slavery,  the  unspeakable  degrada 
tion  of  the  trade  in  human  flesh  —  and  you  ask  us  what  we 
expect  to  do !" 

"Well,  I  don't  imagine  you're  going  to  buy  up  all  the  nig 
gers  and  set  'em  free  with  the  help  of  my  contribution,  Doc 
tor  Sharpless,"  said  the  old  man,  looking  up  from  the  quill  he 
was  shaping  —  we  still  used  quills  in  the  office  in  deference  to 
his  whim;  he  tried  the  nib  on  his  thumb-nail  and  went  on; 
"that  wouldn't  quite  settle  the  trouble.  And,  of  course,  you 
ain't  going  to  spend  it  buying  drinks  for  the  voters  and  getting 
on  the  right  side  of  'em  generally.  No,  I  know  you  won't  do 
that,"  he  added,  grinning  openly  as  he  met  the  minister's  ex 
pression  of  horror;  "no,  of  course,  this  is  for  legitimate  cam 
paign  expenses  —  hiring  halls  and  paying  for  lighting  'em, 
and  printing  and  stationery  and  postage  and  all  that.  Well, 
I'd  just  as  lief  give  something  towards  it.  I  believe  you 
Abolitionists  are  in  earnest"  —his  manner  distantly  sug 
gested  to  Nathan  —  "if  you  are  a  pack  of  fools—  "  but  the 
others  probably  did  not  so  construe  it. 

"We  felt  that  you  sympathized  with  the  cause,  Mr.  Marsh, 
we  knew  that  we  could  relie  on  your  support"  —  Sharpless 
began  warmly.  Old  George  held  up  an  arresting  hand. 
With  the  other  he  lifted  the  check  with  the  wet  ink  shining 
on  it  and  waved  it  to  and  fro  over  the  stove. 

"  You're  out  there,  Mr.  Sharpless,"  he  said.  "  I  don't  exactly 
sympathize  with  your  cause — not  the  way  you  mean,  that  is." 

"What?  Why,  Mr.  Marsh,  I  myself  have  heard  you  say 
that  you  left  the  South  because  you  did  not  approve  of  the 
condition  of  slavery.  The  negro  — " 

"The  niggers!"  said  Marsh,  contemptuously;  "why,  Mr. 
Sharpless,  I  don't  give  a  damn  for  the  niggers.  It's  the  white 
people  I'm  thinking  about.  I  don't  know  that  slavery  harms 
a  nigger;  bond  or  free,  he  ain't  much  good  that  I  can  see. 
But  there's  no  question  but  what  it's  bad  for  his  master. 


128  NATHAN   BURKE 

You're  right  saying  I  got  away  from  the  South  because  of 
slavery  —  I  couldn't  stand  the  white  men  it  made.  Slavery 
rots  'em  out;  there  ain't  a  country  nor  a  race  on  the  face  of 
the  globe  that  can  stand  up  against  it.  If  it  paid,  there'd  be 
something  to  say  for  it.  But,  by  God,  sir,  it  don't  pay  !  I 
lived  there  ten  years,  and  I've  got  it  figured  pretty  fine.  It's 
the  most  costly  and  least  profitable  labor  you  can  employ  — 
why,  even  a  planter  will  acknowledge  that,  if  he's  a  smart 
fellow,  and  you  can  get  him  to  go  into  the  calculations  with 
you.  It's  death  to  any  kind  of  enterprise  or  ambition  to  live 
alongside  it.  If  you  could  get  hold  of  the  planters  and  make 
'em  understand  that,"  suggested  Mr.  Marsh,  folding  up  the 
check  and  shoving  it  into  the  minister's  slightly  hesitant 
hand,  "you  might  do  some  good.  Only  they  haven't  been 
brought  up  to  look  at  things  in  a  practical  way,  and  it's  hard 
to  beat  it  into  a  man  with  two  or  three  hundred  nigger  slaves 
and  a  big  sugar  or  cotton  plantation  that  he's  got  the  little  end 
of  the  bargain,  after  all.  But  there's  no  use  antagonizing  'em 
with  a  lot  of  blood-and-thunder  talk  about  the  degradation 
and  infamy  of  their  own  lives.  In  the  first  place  you  don't 
know  anything  about  their  lives  — 

"Mr.  Marsh,"  said  Sharpless,  in  a  trembling  voice,  and  ris 
ing  with  dignity  in  front  of  his  scandalized  committee,  "I 
have  always  supposed  you  to  be  a  Christian  man,  but  it  seems 
to  me  you  take  an  unfair  advantage  of  —  of  —  you  think 
your  generosity  gives  you  the  privilege  to  —  to  — 

"Before  you  go  any  farther,  sir,  I'd  like  to  ask  you  one 
question,"  pursued  old  George,  unmoved.  "Have  you  ever 
been  in  the  South  ?  Have  any  of  you  ever  been  in  the  South  ? 
No  ?  Well,  then,  gentlemen,  I  say  what  I  said  before, — you 
don't  know  anything  about  it.  Now  when  I  tell  you  the 
niggers,  generally  speaking,  are  treated  as  well  as  they  de 
serve,  it's  the  truth.  Nine-tenths  of  the  stories  you've 
been  hearing  and  believing  are  damn  lies.  If  you'd  leave  off 
harping  on  that  string  and  show  'em  where  the  system's  at 
fault,  and  how  much  they're  out  of  pocket  by  it,  seems  to  me 
you'd  stand  a  better  chance  of  persuading  'em  to  your 
views  —  '  he  ushered  them  out  with  no  great  ceremony. 
Whatever  the  feelings  with  which  they  had  listened  to  this 
exceedingly  plain  exposition  of  Mr.  Marsh's  opinions,  they 
realized  he  had  no  more  time  to  spend  on  them. 


EXORITUR   CLAMOR   VIRUM  129 

"Queer  old  file,  Sharpless,  isn't  he?"  said  Ducey,  amiably, 
returning  to  the  office;  "I  can't  stand  these  Abolitionists  — 
they're  too  visionary  for  me.  No  earthly  chance  of  their 
candidate's  election  —  no  earthly  chance,  and  here  they  come 
around  asking  for  money  !  The  whole  idea  is  so  impractical. 
Why,  they  couldn't  get  along  without  slaves  down  South; 
the  climate  would  kill  white  laborers.  But,  of  course,  Sharp- 
less  would  never  take  anything  like  that  into  consideration  — 
perfectly  impractical,  like  all  the  rest  of  them,"  said  William, 
worrying  among  his  papers  with  much  importance.  "Ever 
heard  Sharpless  preach  ?  I  went  once;  the  sermon  was  solid 
hell-fire  from  beginning  to  end.  That  boy  of  his  is  absolutely 
worthless,  they  say." 

"Huh!  Never  saw  him,"  growled  his  senior,  carelessly, 
and  there  followed  a  silence  and  a  great  industry  of  pens  at  all 
the  desks.  Nat  was  faintly  disappointed;  he  had  hoped 
somehow  that  Mr.  Ducey,  having  begun  on  the  Sharpless 
family,  would  continue  —  would  say  something  about  —  why, 
about  Mrs.  Sharpless,  to  be  sure,  or  even  Miss  Sharpless. 
Nathan  had  never  seen  the  son  either,  so,  naturally  was  not 
interested  in  him.  But  it  happened  that  a  week  or  so  later, 
going  into  the  tap-room  of  the  Erin-go-Bragh  one  afternoon, 
and  investing  in  a  glass  of  something  hot  to  ward  off  the  se 
verity  of  a  nipping  winter  air,  Mr.  Burke  inadvertently  laid 
down  upon  the  counter  in  payment  a  piece  of  money  which  he 
generally  kept  carefully  bestowed  in  a  separate  pocket  against 
just  such  accidents,  to  wit:  Francie  Blake's  quarter,  that 
storied  coin.  He  finished  the  drink  and  came  away,  but  luckily 
discovered  his  loss  almost  at  once  and  hurried  back.  The  place 
had  been  nearly  empty,  so  that  he  had  good  hopes  of  tracing  it. 

"I  gave  you  two  bits  for  that  whiskey-toddy,  didn't  I?" 
he  asked  the  barkeeper.  "It's  a  keepsake  and  I'd  like  to  get 
it  back.  Here's  another.  My  quarter  was  dated  1837,  and 
had  N.  B.  scratched  with  a  pen-knife  on  one  side  and  F.  B.  on 
the  other  —  the  scratches  weren't  deep  enough  to  show  very 
much.  Will  you  look  in  the  till,  please  ?  " 

The  barkeeper  obligingly  consented,  but  he  searched  in 
vain,  even  going  so  far  as  to  spread  a  handful  of  quarters, 
all  there  were  in  the  drawer,  for  Nathan  to  examine  himself. 
"I'd  hate  to  lose  it,"  said  the  latter,  poking  and  prying  about 
with  genuine  regret. 


130  NATHAN   BURKE 

"I  changed  a  dollar  for  that  feller  in  the  corner,  see  him? 
Maybe  he's  got  it.  Oh,  Jim!"  said  the  barkeeper,  and  he 
pointed  into  the  back  room  where  there  was  a  billiard-table 
at  which  Nat,  in  common  with  the  other  patrons  of  the  es 
tablishment,  occasionally  performed.  It  was  empty  at  the 
moment  except  for  a  young  man  sitting  at  a  little  wooden 
table  by  the  window  and  writing  in  'the  failing  light  at  an 
amazing  rate  of  speed,  with  a  pile  of  foolscap  sheets  in  front 
of  him.  He  was  a  tall  young  man,  very  thin,  shabbily  dressed, 
and  lantern-jawed,  in  a  coat  buttoned  up  close  to  the  neck, 
with  a  frayed  black  stock,  no  collar,  and  no  cuffs.  He  looked 
up  as  they  spoke  and,  on  being  called,  caught  Nat's  eye,  and 
nodded  pleasantly.  "  Just  a  minute,"  said  he;  "I  think  I've 
got  your  quarter,  sir."  He  wiped  his  pen  on  the  sleeve  of  his 
all  but  ragged  surtout,  arose,  and  presently  fished  out  the 
two  bits  from  an  old  leather  pocket-book  in  which,  as  Nathan 
could  not  help  seeing,  there  was  very  little  else.  " Eureka!" 
he  said  with  solemnity,  handed  it  over,  bowed  with  a  flourish, 
and  went  back  to  his  writing.  It  appeared  to  be  finished,  for 
he  gathered  up  the  papers  in  a  moment,  clapped  on  a  moth- 
eaten  beaver  hanging  on  the  back  of  his  chair,  and  walked  off, 
nodding  to  Nat  once  more  with  a  smile  so  sudden,  genial,  and 
valiant,  spite  of  his  poor  outside,  as  to  move  one  with  an  in 
explicable  liking. 

"Who  is  he,  do  you  know?"  said  Burke  to  the  barkeeper, 
vaguely  conscious  of  having  seen  the  other  elsewhere. 

"Yes,  oh,  yes.  He  comes  in  here  all  the  time  to  write. 
We've  got  to  calling  that  table  his,  it's  where  he  always 
sits.  He  writes  for  the  Journal  or  maybe  the  Indepen 
dent  —  I  dunno  —  don't  make  much  difference  to  Jim, 
I  guess.  They've  got  a  lot  of  new  papers  started  just  for 
the  campaign,  you  know,  the  Straight-out  Harrisonian's  one 
of  'em  —  b'lieve  he  writes  for  that,  too.  Seen  it  ?  I  guess 
Jim  ain't  just  wallerin'  in  money,  like  old  Pop  Marsh," 
said  the  barkeeper,  who  knew  Nathan  —  knew,  indeed, 
every  man  in  town  and  was  a  kind  of  walking  directory. 
He  wiped  off  the  counter  and  went  on,  "Why,  his  name's 
Sharpless,  he's  the  preacher's  son  —  kinder  on  the  outs  with 
the  old  man,  I  hear." 


CHAPTER  X 

LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-ClDER 

SOMEBODY  estimated  that  there  were  between  twenty  and 
thirty  thousand  people  quartered  in  the  capitol  city  the 
week  of  Washington's  Birthday  —  something  like  four  or 
five  times  its  regular  population.  Notwithstanding  three 
days'  steady  rain,  and  a  condition  of  the  roads  and  rivers 
which,  had  the  visit  been  necessary  for  business  instead  of 
pleasure,  would  have  been  considered  impassable,  the  town 
was  full  of  celebrating  Harrisonians;  and  more  were  arriv 
ing  by  every  stage,  in  their  own  conveyances,  on  horseback, 
and  afoot.  The  taverns  overflowed;  the  Ducey  house 
was  crowded,  every  house  in  town  was  crowded;  and  it  was 
reported  that  Governor  Gwynne,  who  was  entertaining  the 
Whig  Campaign  Committee,  had  all  the  rooms  in  his  big 
mansion  occupied  and  cots  in  the  parlors.  Burke,  going 
home  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening,  found  the  bed  not  yet 
made  up  in  his  little  room,  and  Mrs.  Slaney  dashing  right 
and  left  with  her  head  tied  up  in  a  towel,  flustered,  untidy, 
and  happy.  "Oh,  Mr.  Burke,"  she  panted;  "I'm  so  sorry 
your  room  ain't  fixed,  but  you're  so  sympathetic  I  knew 
you'd  understand.  I  ain't  had  as  much  to  do  since  Slaney 
went  away.  He  kind  of  drew  people  to  the  house,  you  know, 
card-playing  gentlemen  and  such." 

Nat  had  a  shrewd  guess  that  there  were  probably  some 
few  of  Mr.  Slaney's  acquaintances  amongst  all  these  single- 
hearted  supporters  of  the  FARMER  OF  NORTH  BEND.  You 
might  see  them  following  their  chosen  profession  in  the 
back  rooms  of  a  dozen  coffee-houses,  or  congregated  about 
the  doors,  wielding  gold  toothpicks  in  a  graceful  manner, 
impassive,  pale-faced,  shifty-eyed,  in  rich  waistcoats  fes 
tooned  with  watch-chains,  with  shining  bell-crowned  hats 
perched  aslant  on  their  sleek  bears'  greased  locks.  They 
swaggered  along  our  streets,  flourishing  their  canes,  arm  in 
arm,  leering  into  all  the  women's  bonnets  as  they  passed;  it 

131 


132  NATHAN   BURKE 

gave  us  something  of  a  brilliant,  metropolitan  air.  It  also 
strengthened  Mr.  Burke's  conviction  that  these  crowds  were 
no  place  for  women  and  little  children,  and  indeed,  setting 
aside  the  strangers,  one  did  not  see  very  many  of  them. 
The  mob,  if  good-natured  and  on  the  whole  orderly,  was 
yet  of  a  roughness  seldom  or  never  seen  nowadays  ;  and  hard 
cider,  the  drink  of  this  campaign,  was  being  absorbed  with 
a  great  deal  too  much  patriotic  zeal  to  suit  the  quieter  ele 
ment  in  the  community.  Some  Democrats  and  even  some 
Abolitionists  must  have  generously  agreed  to  forego  their 
animosity  and  join  in  this  particular  species  of  ratification; 
for  Nathan  identified  not  a  few  whose  adverse  opinions  were 
notorious,  and  nobody  could  possibly  have  been  drunker 
or  shouted  for  Harrison  with  more  fervor.  All  the  street- 
corner  orators  redoubled  their  efforts ;  the  Journal  came 
out  with  flaming  editorials;  ever  so  many  poets  burst  into 
spontaneous  song.  They  saluted  the  Whig  candidate  with: 
"Hail,  Warrior  Chieftain  of  the  West!"  or  admonished  the 

".  .  .  'Powers  that  be' 
That  our  bleeding  country  shall  be  free, 
And  breathe  its  wonted  prosperity. 
Yes,  Tippy!  .  .  ." 

And  so  on;  the  narrow  bounds  of  verse  probably  required 
the  last  abbreviation;  Tippecanoe  is  a  word  that  defies  the 
muse.  Otherwise  nothing  was  too  much  for  these  gallant 
rhymesters. 

In  spite  of  the  rain  which  fell  with  a  sodden  persistence 
up  till  the  very  day  of  the  celebration,  when  it  eased  every 
body's  mind  by  finally  clearing  off,  the  decorations,  flags, 
canvas  banners,  portraits,  and  all  the  rest  were  put  in  place; 
and  there  was  a  stupendous  activity  among  the  speakers, 
singers,  musicians,  and  others  who  were  to  figure  in  the 
exercises.  Some  bandsmen  rented  a  warehouse-loft  over 
against  the  Slaney  residence  and  kept  the  whole  neighbor 
hood  awake  until  the  small  hours,  booming  and  blowing 
"Tippecanoe  and  Tyler  too,"  and  like  melodies,  till  an 
indignant  sufferer  in  the  room  beneath  Burke's  sent  a  boot 
jack  through  their  window  and  broke  up  the  meeting.  Nat 
heard  the  crash  and  swearing,  as  he  lay  with  his  law-books 


LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-€IDER  133 

striving  to  study,  and  blew  out  the  candle  and  turned  over, 
chuckling.  He  told  Mr.  Marsh  about  it  the  next  day  in 
an  odd  hour,  to  the  old  man's  infinite  amusement.  They 
had  decided  to  shut  up  the  store ;  an  enterprising  adventurer 
came  along  and  wanted  to  exhibit  a  number  of  chained 
'coons,  which,  he  said,  were  " regular  Harrisonian  emblems," 
and  sure  to  attract  trade,  in  the  front  part;  but  Nat,  who 
happened  to  be  in  charge  at  the  time,  declined.  The  young 
man,  who  was  always  soft-hearted,  felt  a  pity  for  the  har 
assed  animals  worrying  at  their  bonds;  he  would  have  liked 
to  buy  them  all  and  set  them  free,  but  their  owner,  perceiv 
ing  this  mood,  over-cannily  set  such  a  staggering  price  upon 
his  captives  that  Nat  had  to  give  up  his  sentimental  plan. 
That  same  morning  he  had  seen,  with  another  pang  of  foolish 
sympathy,  the  live  eagle  chained  to  its  stake  in  the  State- 
house  yard,  which  they  proposed  to  carry  aloft  in  the  pro 
cession  the  next  day  —  a  poor  sort  of  symbol  of  Liberty, 
Nat  thought.  One  of  its  legs  was  broken,  and  Heaven  knows 
in  what  pain  and  fever  the  creature  sat  erect,  motionless,  and 
sleepless  on  its  narrow  perch.  There  was  a  crowd  of  ruthless 
idlers  about,  women  with  babies,  louts  of  lads,  and  one  of 
these  latter  was  prodding  the  poor  bird  with  a  stick,  an 
indignity  it  bore  with  the  same  fierce  indifference,  paying 
no  heed  when  Nathan  cuffed  its  tormentors  aside  and  dis 
solved  the  circle  of  spectators.  Bird  of  Freedom,  indeed! 

Mr.  Burke  himself  took  no  part  in  the  ceremonies,  having 
rejected  the  sole  opportunity  offered  him  —  that  of  parad 
ing  with  the  Harrison  Guards  who  had  been  advertised 
through  the  papers  that  they  were  requested  "to  appear  in 
uniform  at  your  armory  the  20th  inst.,  at  early  candle-light, 
for  the  purpose  of  Drill  and  to  make  preparation  for  our 
parade  on  the  22d  (Washington's  Birthday).  And  we 
also  invite  any  young  gentleman  of  respectable  standing  in 
society  to  meet  with  us."  Some  of  the  clerks  were  mem 
bers  of  this  body,  but  Nathan  laughingly  refused  their  invi 
tations.  There  would  be  enough  people  making  fools  of 
themselves  (he  privately  was  of  opinion)  without  him. 

"I  know  one  man  that  won't  vote  for  Harrison,  anyhow," 
he  said  to  Mr.  Marsh,  and  repeated  what  he  could  remember 
of  Jake  Darnell's  openly  expressed  disapprobation.  "He 
used  to  say  he  hadn't  anything  against  Harrison  as  a  general 


134  NATHAN    BURKE 

in  the  field,  but  up  there  before  the  Fort  Meigs  fight,  Jake 
said  it  was  a  case  of  'one's  afraid  and  t'other  dasnV  with 
Harrison  and  Proctor  both,"  said  Nat;  "each  one  of  'em 
thought  the  other  was  too  strong  for  him  and  put  the  fight 
off  as  long  as  he  decently  could,  Darnell  says.  And  he  used 
to  insist  that  Harrison  didn't  treat  Croghan  right  when  he 
could  hear  the  guns  at  Fort  Stephenson  only  ten  miles  away 
and  knew  how  small  Croghan's  force  was,  and  yet  didn't 
send  him  any  help.  When  I  was  a  boy,  I  thought  if  I  could 
only  grow  up  to  be  like  Croghan,  I'd  be  the  finest  man  on 
earth ;  Jake  made  such  a  hero  of  him.  But  he  used  to  be  quite 
severe  on  Harrison." 

"Huh!  There  ain't  anything  to  that  —  that's  just  talk. 
He'll  be  as  ready  to  vote  the  straight  Whig  ticket  as  any 
body,"  said  Marsh,  sagely.  And  to  Nat's  surprise  this 
prophecy  came  literally  true.  He  ran  across  old  Darnell 
in  the  crowds  not  long  before  the  celebration,  and  found 
him  enthusiastically  drinking  hard  cider  to  the  success  of 
"Old  Tip"  with  some  chance-met  Harrisonians  as  if  no 
candidate  could  have  better  suited  him! 

"Take  a  drink,  Nat,  take  drink  —  here,  lemme  pay  fer 
it  —  don't  you  pay  fer  it,"  he  said  eagerly,  seeking  for  the 
money  with  his  unsteady  hands.  "Lemme  pay  fer  all  yer 
drinks,  boys  —  this  one's  on  me  —  my  turn,  y'know.  Here, 
you  feller,  bring  s'  more  cider  —  hard  cider  —  hard's  you've 
got  it.  Why,  boys,  I  fit  with  Harrison,  I  fit  —  hie  —  fer 
him  there  up  to  Fort  Meigs.  My  name's  Darnell,  you  all 
know  me,  I  guess.  Ol'  Darnell,  ol'  Jake  Darnell.  Dunno 
who'd  vote  for  Harrison  if  'twouldn't  be  me,  hey?  Take 
drink,  Nat,  don't  be  backwards.  Lord,  I'll  pay  fer  it.  My 
frien'  Nat  Burke,  boys,  known  him  ever  since  he  was  so 
high  — " 

"You  didn't  use  to  let  me  drink  in  those  days,  Jake," 
said  Nathan,  with  a  laugh;  "I  was  a  sort  of  a  good  boy,  don't 
you  remember?" 

"So  ye  was,  Nat,  so  ye  was,  durned  if  ye  wasn't  the  best 
boy  I  ever  seed,"  said  his  poor  old  friend,  shaking  him 
warmly  by  the  hand,  with  watery  eyes;  "take  some  cider. 
Cider  can't  hurt  ye  —  but  you  oughtn't  ever  to  touch  no 
whiskey,  Nat,"  he  added  warningly;  "takes  a  ver'  strong 
man  stand  whiskey.  You  stick  to  cider  —  take  a  drink.  'S 


LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-CIDER  135 

on  me,  y'know.  Young  feller  like  you  ain't  got  much 
money,  /  know  that.  My  treat,  boys,  step  up!" 

"I  guess  I  don't  want  any  just  now,  Jake.  Look  here, 
where's  Nance?"  said  Nat,  and  was  gratified  to  see  Jake 
straighten  up  with  a  sudden  and  startling  return  to  sober 
ness,  and  look  all  about  him,  muddled  yet  himself. 

"I  dunno,  I  dunno  where  Nance  is,"  he  said  with  concern; 
"I  brung  her  here  —  leastways  she  jest  would  come  with 
me.  Kinder  sot  on  it,  th'  way  women  git,  y'know,  Nat, 
an'  I  jest  nachelly  couldn't  git  out  o'  bringin'  her.  I  left 
her  at  a  store  tradin'.  She  hadn't  orter  be  alone,  d'ye  think  ? 
'Tain't  anyplace  fer  a  girl,  is  it,  Nat?"  He  looked  at 
Nathan  with  a  piteous  perplexity  and  self-abasement.  "I 
wisht  I  knew  how  to  take  keer  of  Nance;  I  ain't  fitten  fer 
to  have  a  daughter  an'  that's  th'  truth,  an  ol'  drunken  houn' 
like  me.  It's  hard,  Nat." 

Nathan  got  him  away  from  his  boon  companions  without 
further  trouble;  indeed,  these  jolly  gentlemen  were  well 
pleased  to  part  when  they  saw  there  was  nothing  more  to 
be  got  out  of  their  backwoods  acquaintance.  Darnell 
presently  remembered  where  he  had  left  the  girl,  and  sought 
the  place  with  a  painful  anxiety;  he  accused  himself  bitterly 
as  they  went  along.  Nathan  followed  and  listened,  touched 
and  wondering;  it  struck  him  that  Jake  was  getting  old  or 
else  his  way  of  life  was  beginning  to  tell  on  him  at  last. 
Burke  had  never  before  known  him  to  be  garrulous  in  his 
cups ;  and  there  was  an  occasional  feebleness  in  his  voice 
or  look  or  movements  that  was  not  from  drink. 

"I  don't  know  why  you  worry  so  about  Nance,  Jake," 
he  said,  trying  to  allay  the  other's  fears ;  "  she's  a  good  girl 
—  she's  all  right  —  she  can't  come  to  any  harm.  You  see 
she's  just  as  smart  as  she's  pretty  —  and  plucky  too.  No 
body 'd  make  free  with  Nance,  I  guess,"  said  Nat,  with  con 
viction,  remembering  the  girl's  free  and  determined  spirit. 

"They'd  better  not,"  said  Darnell,  with  a  flash  of  the  quick, 
cool,  hard,  and  ready  man  whom  Nathan  recollected  in  the 
old  days;  it  was  gone  in  an  instant,  and  he  caught  at  the 
young  fellow's  arm  almost  with  timidity  as  they  crossed  the 
street  among  the  moving  vehicles.  "It's  gittin'  too  crowded 
up  aroun'  th'  settlements  fer  me  —  I  reckon  I'll  have  to  put 
out  fer  th'  Illinois  er  mebbe  lowy  Territory,"  he  said  com- 


136  NATHAN   BURKE 

plainingly;  "wisht  I'd  'a'  gone  long  ago.  I  don't  like  so 
many  people,  Nathan,  I  ain't  ever  got  used  to  'em.  That's 
what  makes  me  suspicious-like  fer  Nance,  you  know.  She 
thinks  everybody's  good.  Well,  they  ain't  good,  you  V  I 
know  that.  A  woman  don't  hev'  no  chanct  to  know  about 
people  —  a  girl  that  ain't  ever  had  any  mother,  like  Nance. 
She's  got  a  kinder  idee  Mrs.  Ducey's  th'  Angel  Gabriel,  like 
it  tells  'bout  in  th'  Bible,"  said  Darnell,  whose  notions  of 
Holy  Writ,  while  reverent,  were  somewhat  misty;  "well, 
I  don't  guess  Mrs.  Ducey's  any  angel  —  you'd  oughter  hear 
Joe  Williams,  no  thin'  but  a  boy,  of  course,  but  still  — ! 
You  never  talked  none,  Nat,  but  I  guess  you  know,  jest  th' 
same.  But  Nance  always  was  one  to  take  up  with  some  wild 
notion  like  that  —  Lord,  you  remember  how  she's  always 
been  —  an'  she'll  stick  to  it,  too.  It'll  make  her  trouble 
some  day  when  I'm  dead  and  gone  —  'less'n  you'll  look 
after  her,  like  you  said  you  would,"  he  finished  weakly; 
and  Nathan  again  promised  him,  a  little  saddened. 

They  found  her  in  the  shop,  radiant  among  heaps  of  bright 
goods  the  salesman  was  spreading  out  before  her.  Burke 
had  scarcely  ever  seen  Nance  busied  in  so  womanly  a  fashion; 
his  boyhood  recollections  vaguely  presented  her  as  a  slim,  sun- 
colored  creature,  sexless  and  wild,  bare-footed,  in  the  gaudy 
calicoes  she  loved,  familiar  with  the  fields  and  deadenings, 
a  sister  to  fauns  and  dryads.  That  Nance  could  be  a  woman, 
and  a  very  beautiful  one  at  that,  took  him  afresh  with  sur 
prise  and  a  sharp  understanding  of  Darnell's  fears.  He 
resented  the  look  of  patronizing  admiration  the  clerk  bent 
on  her  as  she  hung  over  his  tawdry  stuffs.  Nance  did  not 
see  it,  perhaps  would  not  have  interpreted  it  if  she  had;  she 
was  quite  absorbed,  forgetful  of  her  responsibilities.  They 
returned  upon  her  visibly  as  she  looked  up  with  her  deer-like 
alertness  at  her  father's  step. 

"  Where  you  been  ?  Where's  yer  money  ?  "  she  said  sharply 
—  but  with  the  sort  of  sharpness  with  which  she  might  have 
addressed  a  child;  there  was  a  note  of  defence  and  protection 
in  it.  She  looked  at  Nathan  and  her  face  cleared.  "Oh, 
was  you  with  him,  Nat  ?  My,  how  grand  we  are,  ain't  we  ? 
You  —  why,  you're  all  kind  of  growed  up  !"  She  eyed  him 
with  frank  commendation. 

"It's  all  right,  Nance  —  I  got  my  money  —  here,  mebbe 


LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-CIDER  137 

you'd  better  take  it,  though,"  said  Darnell,  humbly,  and 
brought  out  his  old  wallet  and  thrust  it  into  her  hands. 
"They's  eight  dollars  there.  I  —  I  didn't  spend  none  — 
not  to  'mount  to  anything,  that  is,"  he  assured  her.  "Git 
what  ye  want  —  git  what  ye  want.  Show  her  some  kinder 
pretty  women  fixin's,  will  ye,  mister?"  he  said  to  the  clerk; 
and  the  latter,  happening  to  glance  aside  at  Nathan,  very 
wisely  banished  the  smirk  and  wink  which  he  had  allowed 
to  show  momentarily  upon  his  countenance. 

"I  dunno  whether  to  take  this  plaid  piece  er  this  here 
solid  red,"  sighed  Nance,  in  a  blissful  indecision,  returning 
to  the  unwonted  delights  of  her  shopping.  "It's  fer  to  wear 
at  th'  big  meetin',  ye  know,  Nathan,  next  week,"  she  ex 
plained  parenthetically;  "I'm  goin'  along  with  th'  Wil- 
liamses  —  an'  did  Pap  tell  ye  ?  He's  goin'  to  be  in  th' 
march,  ain't  ye,  Pap?" 

"I  was  layin'  off  not  to  tell  him  that,"  said  Darnell,  sheep 
ishly;  "I  —  I  reckon  it  would  'a'  s'prised  you,  Nat,  to  see 
me  settin'  up  in  one  of  these  here  picture  wagons  they're 
goin'  to  hev'.  Did  you  know  'bout  'em  ?  You  ain't  in  it, 
are  ye?" 

Burke  laughed  as  he  told  him  no,  and  Jake  went  on  to 
describe  the  preparations  enthusiastically.  They  were 
goin'  to  hev'  kinder  platforms  on  wheels,  not  so  very  high 
from  th'  ground,  y'know,  not  more'n  three  feet,  he  guessed, 
or  it  wouldn't  be  stiddy,  with  two-three  teams  hitched  on 
an'  drawin'  'em  along.  An'  reg'lar  made-up  pictures  on 
'em  —  he  didn't  know  what  you'd  call  'em  —  he  never 
heard  of  nothin'  like  'em  before.  They  was  to  be  a  log- 
cabin  —  a  sure  'nough  log-cabin,  built  of  logs,  Nat,  with  a 
little  winder  like  we  used  to  hev'  made  out'n  greased  paper. 
D'ye  b'lieve  they'd  come  to  him  an'  to  oP  Pascoe  to  find  out 
how  'twas  done  ?  An'  a  chimney-place  of  stones  chinked 
up  with  clay-mud,  V  a  fire  in  it,  V  a  mess  o'  mush  in  a 
kittle  hangin'  over  it  — 

"An'  deerskins  nailed  up  outside  to  dry,  ye  know,  Nat, 
V  b'ar,  'n'  otter  pelts,"  Nance  chimed  in;  "'n'  Pap'll  be 
settin'  with  his  oP  rifle  crost  his  knees  right  in  th'  door !" 
She  patted  him  on  the  shoulder,  and  Darnell  chuckled  a  little 
excitedly  and  foolishly. 

"Cat's  out'n  th'  bag  now,"  he  said;   "I  was  fixin'  fer  to 


138  NATHAN   BURKE 

give  yeh  a  s'prise.     But  who  ever  heerd  of  a  woman  that 
c'ld  keep  er  secret?" 

"I  didn't  know  yeh  didn't  want  fer  him  to  know  that/' 
Nance  explained;  "I  thort  all  along  when  you  was  talkin' 
'bout  s'prisin'  Nathan,  ye  meant  sunthin'  else  —  that  other, 
yeh  know."  She  looked  at  him  meaningly,  but  Darnell 
stared  in  evident  bewilderment;  his  mind  had  been  occupied 
with  the  spectacular  role  wherein  he  would  presently  figure 
before  the  crowds  to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else.  Once 
launched  upon  that  topic  it  was  with  a  painful  slowness 
that  he  addressed  himself  to  any  other.  "What?  I  don' 
unnerstan'  — what  yeh  mean,  hey?" 

"Why,  that  'bout — 'bout  Nathan's  Gran'paw  Granger, 
don'  yeh  rec'lect?"  said  the  girl.  She  began  to  insist  anx 
iously;  "  'course  ye  rec'lect,  Pap.  Yeh  was  tellin'  me  'bout  it 
yestiddy.  Sunthin'  'about  th'  Refugee  Track  it  was  —  you 
remember.  Granger  he  ownded  th'  hull  of  th'  Track  — 
wan't  that  it?" 

"Gracious,  that  is  a  sure  enough  surprise!"  Burke  ejacu 
lated  in  open  amusement;  "the  whole  of  the  Refugee  Tract ! 
Whew !  The  town's  built  all  over  it  now  —  right  where  we 
stand.  What  a  pity  Grandpa  Granger  didn't  know  he  was 
going  to  have  a  grandson  !  He  might  have  held  on  to  it, 
and  willed  me  some." 

"No,  no,  that  wan't  it,  Nathan,"  Darnell  interrupted, 
a  little  irritated  partly  at  the  other's  laughing  incredulity, 
partly,  no  doubt,  at  the  slow  working  of  his  own  mind  or 
memory.  "No,  ye  got  it  wrong  —  Nance  got  it  wrong," 
he  repeated  crossly,  yet  still  in  a  pathetic  confusion;  "I- 
I  dunno  jest  how  'twas  —  but  'twan't  that  way.  Nance 
she's  got  it  wrong  —  yeh  hadn't  orter  tell  th'  wimmen- 
folks  anything  'bout  --  'bout  proputty.  They  jest  nachelly 
cain't  hold  ther  tongues." 

"Well,  Nat's  gran'paw  was  a  Britisher  Refugee,  'n'  th' 
Gov'ment  give  him  some  Ian'  fer  to  live  on,  anyhow,"  said 
Nance,  not  at  all  cast  down  by  this  severity  ;  perhaps  it 
pleased  her  as  an  evidence  of  returning  spirit  or  activity 
in  her  father.  "He  tol'  yeh  so  himself,  didn't  he?" 

"Yes,  but  he  never  said  he  owned  all  of  th'  Track  —  they 
was  more  'n'  him  Refugees,"  said  Darnell,  with  impatience. 
He  turned  to  Burke.  "Ef  he  hadn't  'a'  died,  I  reckon  yeh 


LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-CIDER  139 

might  hev'  heired  it,  Nat,  like  yeh  was  sayin'.  Yeh  needn't 
ter  grin  that  way.  I  was  thinkin'  'bout  it  th'  other  day,  an' 
I  sez  to  myself,  'By  criminy,  /  don't  b'lieve  Nat  knows 
'bout  that  there  ol'  Refugee  Track.  I'd  orter  tell  him,'  an' 
then  this  here  procession  fer  Washin'ton's  Birthday,  an'  me 
bein'  in  it  an'  all  kinder  put  yer  gran'paw  out'n  my  head." 

"I  guess  he  didn't  own  enough  to  keep  anybody  awake 
nights  worrying  over  it,"  said  Nat;  "much  obliged  to  you 
for  telling  me  just  the  same,  Jake.  Some  day  I'd  like  for 
you  to  tell  me  everything  you  can  remember  about  my 
grandfather  —  when  you  have  time  and  feel  like  it,  you 
know." 

He  assented  vaguely.  Sartain,  yes  —  when  he  had  time. 
He  went  on  talking  about  the  parade.  It  appeared  there 
were  to  be  other  log-cabins  —  "  besides  them  fellers  that's 
comin'  down  from  Cuyahoga  with  th'  full-rigged  ship  — 
don't  that  beat  all,  Nat?  A  lake-schooner  as  large  as  life, 
only  sot  up  on  some  kind  of  platform  on  wheels  like  th'  rest 
of  us!"  Darnell  said  delightedly;  "somebody  was  tellin' 
me  'bout  it.  I'm  kinder  skeered  that'll  lay  over  our  log- 
cabins  —  don't  want  them  Cuyahogy  fellers  to  beat  us, 
y'know.  I'm  in  th'  first  cabin  —  yeh  want  to  look  fer  us  along 
the  Franklinton  Road  some  time  'bout  noon.  An'  Nance 
she's  goin'  to  be  with  Mis'  Williams  V  some  of  th'  children, 
V  stand  somewheres  near  th'  corner  of  Long  'n'  High,  so's 
I'll  know  where  to  look  fer  her.  You  be  there,  too,  will  ye  ? 
Ye  wanter  see  me  in  th'  cabin,  don't  ye,  Nat?  Tell  you, 
it'll  be  th'  biggest  sight  ever  was  'round  here,  them  cabins  !" 

Nathan  promised  him  to  be  on  the  spot;  indeed  he  made 
an  inward  resolve  to  look  after  the  old  man  as  far  as  possible. 
"I  guess  you  think  I'd  orter  not  let  him  do  it,"  Nance  said 
to  him  privately.  She  knotted  her  black  brows  and  looked 
at  him  wistfully.  To  Burke  there  was  something  at  once 
sad  and  beautiful  in  these  mutual  anxieties  of  father  and 
daughter;  as  seemed  to  be  his  fate,  he  was  the  confidant  of 
both.  "I  couldn't  help  it,"  the  girl  went  on;  "they  come 
and  said  he  was  a  pioneer,  'n'  he'd  orter  do  it.  An'  he 
wanted  to  so  much  himself.  They  wanted  to  know  ef  he 
didn't  hev'  a  coonskin  cap  'n'  moccasins.  'Land!'  says 
I,  'of  course  he  has.  He  wears  'em  all  th'  time  when  he's 
huntin'.'  Don't  that  jest  bang  everything  ye  ever  heerd, 


140  NATHAN    BURKE 

Nat  ?  Tears  to  me  they've  gone  clean  crazy.  I'd  'a*  put 
a  nice  white  biled  shirt  V  a  pair  o'  boots  on  him,  but  they 
won't  hev'  it.  An'  all  he's  got  to  do  is  jest  set  in  th'  cabin 
door,  an'  hev'  folks  look  at  him.  I  don't  like  it  overly  well. 
I  don't  want  Pap  made  no  show  of.  But  he  likes  it  —  he 
—  I  reckon  you  don't  see  nothin'  diff'rent  'bout  Pap  from 
what  he  useter  be,  do  yeh,  Nat?"  she  asked,  her  dark  eyes 
searching  the  other's  face.  In  sheer  humanity  Burke  had  to 
assure  her  that  Darnell  was  as  whole  as  ever,  unchanged. 

When  the  great  day  at  last  arrived,  being  ushered  in  with 
that  terrific  patriotic  din  and  discord  which  greets  all  our 
national  anniversaries,  blowing  of  whistles,  letting  off  of 
firearms,  whang-banging  of  drums,  tin  pans,  or  whatever 
came  handiest,  a  large  number  of  virtuous  citizens,  like  Mr. 
Burke,  who  had  hoped  to  celebrate  the  holiday  by  sleeping 
later  than  usual,  were  balked  of  that  desire,  and  got  up  and 
dressed  in  a  not  at  all  Harrisonian  frame  of  mind.  Nat 
sauntered  about  the  streets  all  morning,  until  sauntering 
became  an  impossibility,  so  closely  packed  as  they  were  with 
the  twenty  thousand  odd  visitors;  he  dodged,  edged,  and 
elbowed  through  into  the  vicinity  of  DUCEY  &  Co.,  where 
the  lower  doors  and  windows  were  securely  shut  and  locked, 
as  he  saw;  and  looking  up,  beheld  the  second-story  likewise 
shut  and  apparently  tenantless;  he  said  to  himself  that  Mrs. 
Ducey  must  have  carried  out  her  plan  in  spite  of  opposition 
and  smiled  a  little  doubtfully.  Standing  on  the  curb,  he 
looked  towards  the  State-house  yard,  and  saw  every  part 
of  the  half-finished  foundation  and  the  board  fence  which 
enclosed  the  whole  jammed  with  people  "hanging  on  by 
their  eye-teeth,"  as  one  of  his  fellow-clerks,  whom  he  at  that 
moment  encountered,  vividly  described  it.  The  roofs, 
even  the  gutters,  the  front  stoops,  and  balconies,  some  of  them 
none  too  stable,  of  every  building  as  far  as  he  could  see  either 
way  were  being  utilized  as  gallery-seats.  High  Street  seemed 
to  have  been  cleared  for  the  procession,  but  there  were  farm- 
wagons  here  and  there  drawn  alongside  the  foot-walk,  filled 
with  chairs,  and  the  fortunate  owners  thereof  were  handing 
about  cider,  doughnuts,  pickles,  and  other  light  refreshments 
amongst  themselves  and  picnicing  with  immense  enjoy 
ment.  The  horses  had  all  been  taken  out  of  these  vehicles, 


LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-CIDER  141 

Nathan  noted  and  thought  of  the  Duceys  again.  Hundreds 
of  people  who  could  not  be  accommodated  were  standing 
as  they  had  stood  for  hours,  in  the  mud,  under  the  open  sky, 
with  the  greatest  patience  and  good-humor.  Nat  and  the 
other  clerk,  whose  name  was  Harry  Kellar,  I  remember,  got 
across  the  street  somehow,  and  wormed  through  the  crowd 
eastward  as  far  as  Third  Street,  where  it  thinned  out  a  little, 
and  walked  down  to  Long  and  so  back  to  High  again.  And 
here  Kellar,  who  was  an  adventurous  youth,  clambered  over 
an  area-railing  and  gained  a  window-ledge  where,  clinging 
like  ivy  on  the  wall,  he  proclaimed  the  outlook  superb. 
"Come  on  up,  Nat,  you  can  see  all  over!"  The  latter,  how 
ever,  had  already  contracted  for  a  seat  with  a  speculator 
who  had  arranged  a  board  across  from  one  pair  of  steps  to 
another,  ingeniously  wedging  between  the  mighty  mud- 
scrapers  which  invariably  adorned  every  front  entrance  in 
those  days;  and  Burke,  having  established  himself  thereon, 
took  the  speculator  —  who  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  eleven 
years  old,  an  energetic,  freckled  youngster  —  on  his  knees, 
so  that  the  rest  of  the  room  could  be  let  out  to  a  gaunt, 
sallow  young  man,  Mr.  James  Sharpless,  in  fact  —  Nat 
knew  him  at  once  in  his  worn,  old  coat.  Observing  him  to 
take  off  his  hat,  with  his  curiously  brilliant  smile,  to  some 
acquaintance  in  the  street,  Burke  followed  the  gesture  and 
saw  it  was  addressed  to  a  high,  shining  buggy  drawn  up,  with 
empty  shafts,  by  the  pavement  close  at  hand;  the  man  in 
it  Nathan  knew  by  sight;  there  was  also  a  very  pretty  girl 
with  auburn  hair  under  a  fashionable  little  bonnet. 

"Look  out,  mister,  here  they  come!"  shrilled  the  boy  in 
his  lap.  Both  of  the  young  men  scrambled  upright  on  their 
precarious  perch,  and  Sharpless,  nodding  across  at  the  other, 
said,  "Give  the  little  fellow  a  hand  up  and  he  can  sit  on  our 
shoulders,"  which  was  done  accordingly.  They  were  com 
ing,  sure  enough.  A  distant  martial  blare  announced  it; 
the  "Hero  of  Tippecanoe"  was  being  sung  and  trumpeted 
with  tremendous  vigor;  hats  went  in  the  air;  there  was 
cheering.  Presently  Nat's  friend,  the  eagle,  came  borne 
aloft,  grim  and  obdurate.  Then  a  band.  A  military  com 
pany  from  Zanesville.  Another  band.  A  handsome  white 
horse  with  a  saddle  and  housings  of  red  velvet  fringed  with 
silver,  led  by  a  groom  in  buff-and-blue  livery. 


142  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Looky,  looky  !  That's  Washington's  horse  —  George 
Washington's  horse  !"  screamed  the  urchin  on  their  shoul 
ders,  drumming  with  his  heels  on  Burke's  chest. 

"How  remarkably  well  preserved!"  ejaculated  Sharpless. 
"And  doesn't  it  look  like  Jabez  Cushman's  horse  that  he 
lends  for  all  the  Mason's  funerals,  though!" 

"That  ain't  Washington's  horse,  mister,"  said  a  man  in 
front  of  them,  pityingly;  "it's  just  Washington's  saddle. 
They  sent  down  to  Marietta  for  it;  it  belongs  to  somebody 
down  there  —  kind  of  an  heirloom,  I  guess.  But  Washing 
ton,  you  know,  why,  he  died  before  I  was  born.  And  a 
horse,  why,  a  horse  don't  live  as  long  as  a  man.  You  see  that 
couldn't  be  Washington's  horse." 

"Dear  me,  you  don't  say!  I  —  I  wish  you'd  repeat  that 
statement,  please,"  said  Sharpless,  anxiously,  feeling  for 
and  bringing  out  a  note-book  and  pencil;  "that's  not  Wash 
ington's  saddle,  you  say  ?  It's  Washington's  horse  —  I'd 
like  to  get  this  straight  if  you  don't  mind  —  I  write  for  the 
paper  —  Washington's  horse" 

"No,  no,  I  say  'tairit  Washington's  horse,  it's  Washington's 
saddle." 

"Hey  ?  Did  you  say  horse  or  saddle  ?  "  shouted  Sharpless, 
elevating  his  voice  above  the  roar  of  an  approaching  band. 

"No!  SADDLE  —  WASHINGTON'S  SADDLE!" 

"I  know  it's  a  saddle.     I  say  WHO'S  SADDLE  ?" 

"WASHING  — Aw,  think  you're  smart,  don't  you?" 

The  band  —  it  was  the  band  of  the  Harrison  Guards  — 
drowned  out  this  lively  argument;  the  Guards,  augmented, 
no  doubt,  by  any  number  of  young  gentlemen  in  respectable 
society,  drew  near,  passed,  went  on.  "They'd  orter  space 
them  bands  further  apart,"  said  a  woman  bystander;  "the 
tunes  git  all  mixed  up.  Good  land  o'  love  !  Look  at  th' 
wagon  with  a  lot  of  dirt  V  stones  on  it,  V  a  man  with  a  plough 
'n'  a  horse  harnessed  up.  See  th'  man,  Bennie?  See  horsey! 
Look  at  th'  horsey!  Who  is  it,  anyhow,  d'ye  s'pose?" 

Another  spectator  volunteered  the  information  that  it 
was  the  FARMER  OF  NORTH  BEND;  it  had  a  label  on  it  to 
that  effect.  "Why,  that  ain't  him,  is  it?  Harrison,  I 
mean?"  she  asked  in  tones  of  awe.  Her  neighbor  guessed 
not;  he  guessed  it  was  just  some  fellow  dressed  up  to  look 
like  Harrison. 


LOG-CABINS-AND-HARD-CIDER  143 

"Oh-oh-ee!  Looky,  looky!  Look  what's  coming!" 
shrieked  the  look-out,  ecstatically;  "it's  a  ship,  it's  a  ship!" 

"See  here,  you  want  to  hold  still,  son,"  Sharpless  cautioned 
him,  trying  to  gather  the  lad's  legs  into  his  grasp.  "By 
George,  you've  got  as  many  feet  as  a  centipede  —  I  never 
saw  a  boy  with  so  many  feet !" 

"Look  at  the  ship  !  And  look  at  the  big  boat  behind  with 
the  band  in,  and  —  oh,  cricky,  watch  those  horses!" 

The  Cuyahoga  brig,  in  fact,  was  passing  at  this  moment, 
full-rigged,  shaking  to  the  top  of  its  masts  with  every  move 
ment  of  its  platform,  with  a  crew  who,  in  manner  at  least, 
fully  carried  out  the  landsman's  conception  of  Jack  ashore; 
more  than  half  of  them  were  gloriously  drunk,  and  getting 
drunker.  On  the  next  float  was  a  band  in  a  canoe  filled 
with  "pioneers,"  with  an  Indian  in  full  war-panoply  at  the 
stern  —  a  fearsome  figure.  "Is  it  a  real  Injun,  do  you 
guess?"  asked  the  woman.  The  man  didn't  know;  he  sus- 
picioned  it  might  be ;  it  was  making  enough  noise  for  a  dozen 
Injuns,  anyhow.  Which  was  quite  true,  as  the  Indian's 
standard  of  histrionic  realism  required  him  to  emit  a  terrify 
ing  whoop  from  time  to  time,  and  brandish  his  tomahawk 
in  a  murderous  style. 

"There's  houses  coming  —  little  houses  with  chimnies,  an* 
a  man  with  a  gun  setting  right  in  the  door!"  announced  the 
boy,  gleefully  —  and  again:  "Oh,  cricky!"  he  screamed; 
"see  those  horses!" 

Nathan  looked.  "Here,  get  down,  boy!"  he  said,  and 
shifted  the  youngster  bodily  to  the  plank,  and  jumped  down 
himself,  and  started  for  the  street.  He  had  almost  to  fight 
his  way  through. 

The  horses  drawing  some  of  the  floats  had  not  been  be 
having  well,  although  they  seemed  to  be  for  the  most  part 
sedate  beasts,  and  had  probably  been  in  training  for  the  day. 
But  it  was  not  in  horse  flesh-and-blood  to  accept  the  racket 
peaceably;  the  canoe-driver  just  passed  by  was  having 
trouble  with  his  team;  and  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye  Nat 
saw  the  pole-horse  of  the  float  carrying  Darnell's  cabin 
plunging  and  backing.  It  was  a  sorrel  with  white  fore  legs. 
The  band  was  playing  "Old  Rosin-the-Bow." 

At  the  first,  Burke  was  not  thinking  at  all  about  the  floats, 
but  of  the  Ducey  carriage  and  black  and  bay  pair  of  horses 


144  NATHAN   BURKE 

he  had  so  often  driven.  He  could  not  tell  how  long  they  had 
been  there  at  the  corner,  but  it  could  not  have  been  from 
the  first,  or  he  would  have  seen  them  before  this.1  The 
scared  people  were  crowding  back  in  every  direction,  shout 
ing  and  screaming.  In  the  carriage  were  Mrs.  Ducey  and 
Francie,  and  two  or  three  others,  ladies,  children  —  I  can 
not  remember  who.  Ducey  was  not  with  them ;  it  was 
George  driving.  Everything  happened  quickly  —  almost 
at  once.  Burke  got  through  the  crowd  somehow,  and  ran 
up  and  seized  hold  of  the  bridle  of  the  bay,  and  tried  to  force 
them  back  and  to  one  side;  he  spoke  to  them;  the  horses 
were  both  quite  frantic,  rearing,  a  whirl  of  flying  hoofs. 
He  heard  Francie  or  some  one  in  the  carriage  scream  out: 
" Nathan,  Nathan!  Oh,  he'll  be  killed,  he'll  be  killed!" 
George  Ducey  was  standing  up  in  the  front  seat,  clutching 
the  reins  and  slashing  the  horses  across  the  back  with  a  whip, 
and  crying  out  in  a  wild  way;  I  believe  he  was  beside  himself 
with  fright,  and  did  not  know  what  he  was  doing.  The 
driver  of  the  log-cabin  float,  struggling  with  his  own  scared 
team,  bawled  furiously:  "God  damn  you,  drop  that  whip, 
you  damn  fool!  Somebody  hit  him  over  the  head,  will 
you — !"  and  more  oaths.  The  float  was  almost  on  us. 
Nat  saw  Darnell's  face  in  the  cabin-door  above  him, 
vacantly  smiling.  "Get  back,  Jake,  for  God's  sake,  get 
back!"  he  cried  and  clung  desperately  to  the  bridles. 
George  —  I  think  it  was  George  —  all  at  once  gave  a  horrible 
kind  of  screech,  and  threw  the  reins  aside,  and  plunged  over 
the  wheels  into  the  crowd.  The  flying  buckle  of  the  reins 
struck  Nathan  on  the  forehead  and  cut  to  the  bone  and  the 
blood  ran  down.  It  blinded  him  for  a  second;  I  do  not  know 
whether  the  pole  of  the  carriage  struck  Darnell  first,  or  the 
horses'  hoofs  —  maybe  it  was  both  together.  He  was  flung 
from  his  place  and  down  into  the  mud,  and  tried  to  rise; 
and  went  down  again,  and  the  hind  wheels  of  the  float  went 
over  him  —  over  his  neck.  He  was  dead  before  any  of  us 
got  to  him. 

1  According  to  the  coroner's  report,  the  carriage  had  been  standing 
around  the  corner  on  the  other  street  from  the  beginning.  It  was  the 
backing  or  lunging  of  the  horses  that  brought  it  into  Burke's  view; 
for  further  particulars  of  this  distressing  accident  the  reader  is  referred 
to  the  Ohio  State  Journal  for  February  23-25,  1840.  —  M.  S.  W. 


CHAPTER  XI 

IN  WHICH  NANCE  BEGINS  THE  WORLD 

WHEN  this  thing  happened,  there  arose  from  the  crowd 
a  dreadful  shuddering  groan,  and  a  scream  here  and  there. 
The  procession  was  still  coming  on,  the  bands  blaring  and 
people  cheering  up  the  street.  It  halted,  recoiling  on  itself, 
in  a  moment;  but  I  dare  say  there  were  hundreds  who  did 
not  know  until  the  next  day,  perhaps,  when  the  papers  came 
out,  what  it  was  that  had  blocked  the  way.  Nathan  who 
was  a  little  dazed,  clutching  at  the  horses'  bits,  all  at  once 
found  that  they  were  standing  quite  still,  trembling  and 
glaring;  and  a  dozen  men  were  at  the  traces.  The  Indian 
who  had  been  war-whooping  in  the  stern  of  the  canoe 
jumped  down  and  came  running  up  to  us:  "What  is  it? 
Was  that  fellow  hurt?"  he  panted.  And  then  looking  down 
—  "My  God!"  he  said.  Some  men  were  lifting  up  Darnell's 
body.  "Bring  a  shutter  here,  some  of  you!"  the  Indian 
shouted.  He  was  very  active  and  helpful  —  I  never  found 
out  his  name.  Mrs.  Ducey  stood  up  in  the  carriage  and 
called,  "George!  George!"  looking  wildly  around.  Nat 
felt  some  one  take  him  by  the  arm  and  draw  him  aside  while 
the  horses  were  being  led  away;  one  of  them  had  a  bad  gash 
in  the  near  fore  leg ;  the  pole  of  the  carriage  was  broken 
squarely  off.  "You're  hurt  —  bleeding,"  said  somebody; 
" where's  your  handkerchief?"  Burke  stared  at  him  — 
"Speaking  to  me?"  he  said  vacantly,  and  the  other  repeated 
gently,  "You're  hurt  —  your  forehead's  cut  open  —  I'll 
bind  it  up  if  you'll  give  me  your  handkerchief  —  or  maybe 
we  can  get  a  rag  somewhere  —  "  Nat  mechanically  brought 
out  his  handkerchief  and  held  it  to  his  forehead.  "Oh, 
damn  this  blood!"  he  said,  as  it  persistently  welled  from  the 
cut,  in  a  sudden  burst  of  unreasoning  anger;  he  was  a  good 
deal  shaken  by  what  he  had  seen.  His  friend  —  it  was 
Sharpless  —  went  to  the  carriage,  where  Mrs.  Ducey  was  still 
standing  up  and  calling  her  son.  "George  is  right  over 
here,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  he  said;  "he's  sick  —  sick  at  his  stomach, 
L  145 


146  NATHAN   BURKE 

but  he's  not  hurt  —  just  frightened.  He'll  be  here  in  a 
minute.  There's  somebody  gone  for  your  husband.  Hasn't 
the  young  lady  —  Miss  Blake,  isn't  it  ?  — hasn't  she  fainted  ?" 
She  had  indeed  and  lay  senseless  across  the  laps  of  the  scared 
women.  Sharpless  got  up  on  the  carriage-wheel,  and 
shouted  over  the  people's  heads:  "Vardaman!  John!" 
he  shouted;  "let  the  doctor  through  here,  won't  you?" 
And  the  doctor,  whom  Nathan  remembered  seeing  sitting  in 
his  buggy  with  the  pretty  red-haired  girl,  finally  struggled 
through  the  crowd,  without  any  hat  and  his  coat  torn. 

They  had  wrenched  a  door  from  its  hinges,  and  laid 
Darnell  on  it,  and  Nance  was  kneeling  by  it  in  the  mud. 
She  looked  in  Vardaman's  face  as  the  doctor  stooped  over, 
feeling  and  listening;  then  took  off  the  red  shawl  she  was 
wearing  about  her  shoulders  and  spread  it  over  her  father's 
face,  and  stood  up,  and  some  of  the  men  uncovered  their 
heads.  Nance  did  not  shed  a  tear;  Mrs.  Williams,  who  was 
with  her,  was  wailing  hysterically,  and  some  of  the  other 
women,  I  believe.  The  doctor  spoke  in  a  low  voice,  and 
Darnell's  body  was  lifted  up  again  and  carried  into  one  of  the 
houses  —  a  tailor's  shop  at  the  corner.  By  this  time  a  con 
stable  or  two  had  come  up,  and  they  cleared  the  way  for  the 
bearers.  And  presently  the  procession  moved  on  once  more; 
there  had  been  hurrahing  and  music  somewhere  all  the  time. 

"What's  your  name,  young  man?"  one  of  the  policemen 
said  to  Nathan;  "I'm  taking  'em  for  the  coroner,  you  know," 
he  added  in  explanation,  and  entered  it  in  his  note-book. 
"Nathan  Burke?  All  right.  And  what's  yours?  I  mean 
you,  young  fellow.  You  got  the  doctor,  didn't  you?" 

"My  name's  Sharpless,  and  I  didn't  do  anything  —  but 
I  saw  it  all  if  it's  witnesses  you  want.  James  Sharpless," 
repeated  the  latter  hastily,  as  he  passed  them  with  a  tumbler 
of  water  that  he  had  got  from  Heaven  knows  where;  he  got 
up  on  the  carriage-step  to  give  it  to  Francie.  Other  men 
were  helping  the  ladies  out  of  the  dismantled  vehicle;  the 
children  were  crying  dismally;  Mr.  Ducey  had  come;  and 
Nat  saw  the  constable  interrogating  George  in  another  mo 
ment. 

"  I  didn't  do  it,  'twasn't  my  fault  —  was  it  my  fault,  Ma?  " 
George  cried  over  and  over  again.  He  mopped  his  pale  face ; 
he  trembled  as  with  an  ague;  his  eyes  roved.  George  had 


NANCE   BEGINS   THE   WORLD  147 

grown  up  into  a  tall,  slim  boy  lately;  he  was  not  strong 
and  at  the  instant  looked  curiously  like  a  palsied  old  man. 
"The  horses  pulled  the  reins  right  out  of  my  hands  —  I 
couldn't  hold  'em  —  nobody  could  have  held  'em  —  no 
body,  I  tell  you.  The  band  scared  them,  or  I  could  have 
held  them.  There  was  a  man  hanging  on  to  their  heads, 
and  I  couldn't  do  anything  with  'em  as  long  as  he  held  on. 
That's  what  scared  'em.  It  was  his  fault.  They  got 
frightened  when  they  saw  the  cabin  coming  —  that's  what 
frightened  'em.  That  man  sitting  in  the  cabin-door  he  did 
something  that  scared  'em  —  I  don't  know  what  —  but  it 
was  all  his  fault  —  you  couldn't  do  anything  with  the  horses. 
It  wasn't  my  fault  —  you  can't  blame  me  —  I  didn't  do 
anything — " 

"Lord  love  you,  who's  saying  you  did?  I  ain't  asking 
for  anything  but  your  name,"  said  the  constable,  impa 
tiently.  "So  scairt  you  can't  tell  your  own  name?" 

"I'm  not  scared  —  I'm  not  scared  —  I  —  I  —  my  name's 
Ducey.  But  you  can't  put  me  in  jail,  you  know  —  it  wasn't 
my  fault  — 

"I  ain't  going  to  jail  you.  We  don't  jail  people  for  being 
scared  to  death,"  said  the  constable,  wetting  his  pencil. 

"I  wasn't  scared,  I  tell  you  —  the  horses  pulled  the  reins 
right  out  of  my  hand  —  why,  everybody  saw  'em  pull  the 
reins  out  of  my  hand.  Ma,  didn't  you  see  'em  ?  I  wasn't  a 
bit  scared  — " 

"Get  him  some  whiskey,  can't  you?  Anybody  got  a 
flask?"  said  the  constable,  looking  around.  Burke  had  al 
ready  had  the  offer  of  a  dozen.  "Boy'll  have  a  fit  if  we  don't 
look  out,"  remarked  the  officer.  "Mr.  Ducey,  is  that  you? 
That  your  son  ?  Did  you  see  —  ?  Hey  ?  Oh,  you  weren't 
here  ?  I'm  sorry,  I'll  have  to  call  your  wife  and  them  other 
ladies,  too,  I  guess,  they  was  all  witnesses." 

"George,  George,  come  here  with  us,"  Mrs.  Ducey  cried 
out.  "Francie,  can  you  walk,  dearie?  Oh,  William,  what 
shall  we  do?" 

"Is  Nathan  killed?"  said  Francie,  sitting  up  with  a  gray 
face.  "  Was  Nathan  killed  ?  " 

"Here  he  is,  here  he  is,"  said  Sharpless,  pushing  him  for 
ward.  And  Nat  went  up  to  the  carriage  and  took  her 
clammy,  little,  shaking  hand  in  his.  "Why,  Francie — " 


148  NATHAN    BURKE 

he  began,  with  a  rather  ghastly  smile,  I  am  afraid.     She 
burst  out  crying  in  a  wild  fashion. 

"  She'll  be  all  right  now.  Only  get  out  of  this  as  quick 
as  you  can/'  said  the  doctor.  He  had  come  out  of  the  shop, 
and  been  talking  to  the  constable.  Somebody  brought  him 
his  hat,  crushed  in  at  the  side. 

"That  poor  girl  —  that  poor,  pretty,  young  thing,  Doctor, 
is  she  in  there?  It  was  her  father,  wasn't  it?"  cried  Mrs. 
Ducey.  "Oh,  I'm  so  sorry  —  so  sorry!"  The  tears  ran 
down  her  cheeks.  "I'm  going  in  to  see  her  —  let  me  go  in 
to  see  her  —  William,  how  can  you  ?  I  want  to  see  her  !" 

"Better  not,  Mrs.  Ducey,  I  think,"  said  Vardaman, 
kindly;  "you  can't  do  any  good,  you  know.  The  man  is 
dead  —  killed  instantly,  I  believe  —  at  least  I  hope  so." 

"Oh,  I  don't  believe  it  —  he  can't  be  dead  —  he's  just 
unconscious.     I  can  bring  him  to  —  I'm  sure  I  can.     He 
wasn't  under  the  wheel,  was  he?     It  just  slipped  —  and — 
and  bruised  him,  didn't  it?     I  know  a  splendid  liniment  — 

"There's  nothing  to  be  done,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  said  the  doctor, 
patiently.  "I  know  this  is  distressing  to  you,  and  you  want 
to  help  all  you  can,  but  he's  beyond  help  from  any  of  us." 

"Well,  but  I  want  to  talk  to  that  poor  girl  —  what  do  you 
men  know  about  it  ?  I  want  to  see  her. " 

"I  know  her,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  interposed  Nathan;  "I  know 
her  —  I'll  take  a  message  to  her.  But  let  her  alone  right 
now.  I'll  see  to  her.  Hadn't  you  better  get  Francie  home  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  almost  blankly.  "  Oh,  it's  Natlfan  Burke 
—  I  didn't  know  you  at  first.  What's  the  matter  with  your 
your  head?  Were  you  hurt,  too  ?" 

"Nothing,  I  cut  it,"  Nat  told  her;  "you  ought  to  go  home 
now- 

"No,  no  —  I  want  to  speak  to  that  poor  girl  first  —  I 
want  to  take  her  home  —  William,  we  must  take  her  home 
with  us  — 

"She  won't  leave  her  father  —  and  she's  with  people  she 
knows  —  friends,"  said  Nathan,  soothingly;  "you're  a 
stranger,  you  know,  Mrs.  Ducey  - 

"Do  come  home,  Anne,"  said  Ducey,  nervously. 

"I'll  see  about  Nance  —  I'll  take  care  of  her,"  Burke  re 
iterated;  "look  at  George.  He'll  be  sick  if  you  don't  take 
him  away  from  here  — " 


NANCE    BEGINS   THE   WORLD  149 

"That  blood  on  your  head  is  disgusting,"  said  George, 
faintly.  "Why  don't  you  tie  it  up  so  it  won't  show?" 

And  in  the  meanwhile  we  had  been  urging  them  all  stead 
ily  away  from  the  spot,  Mrs.  Ducey  moving  readily  enough 
when  told  that  George  needed  it.  Sharpless  and  the  doctor 
had  Francie  between  them.  Nathan  carried  in  his  arms  a 
stout  little  boy  of  five  or  six  who  roared  with  terror,  and 
partly  also  with  rage  at  being  thus  forcibly  deported,  half 
the  way  home;  I  hardly  know  how  we  got  there  at  last. 
Mr.  Marsh,  to  whom  somebody  had  taken  word,  came  hurry 
ing  up  just  as  we  reached  the  house. 

"You'll  tell  that  poor  girl  I  want  to  see  her  ?  You'll  tell 
her,  Nathan  ? "  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  earnestly,  as  they  parted. 
Nathan  promised  that  he  would.  He  thought  that  her  im 
pulsive  sympathy,  if  it  did  not  wear  itself  out  before  she  saw 
Nance,  might,  perhaps,  comfort  the  girl;  Mrs.  Ducey's 
kindness  was  as  domineering  as  all  her  other  traits  of  char 
acter;  she  could  be  unreasonably  and  masterfully  tender; 
but  that  might  be  what  Nance  needed,  for  all  Nat  could  tell. 

"You'd  better  come  around  to  my  office  and  let  me  see 
that  head,  sir,"  said  the  doctor;  "you've  got  a  pretty  nasty- 
looking  cut  there.  Come  this  evening.  I  don't  think  you 
could  get  to  it  now."  As  he  hurried  off,  Nathan  heard  him 
say  to  Sharpless  with  a  concerned  look,  "I  left  Louise  — 
Miss  G wynne,  I  mean,  sitting  in  the  buggy  all  by  herself 
—  I  couldn't  very  well  help  it." 

This,  as  nearly  as  I  remember  it,  was  the  exact  order  of 
events  on  that  melancholy  Washington's  Birthday  forty 
years  ago.  Yet  I  have  a  much  more  vivid  and  detailed 
recollection  of  it  than  I  have  been  able  to  put  on  paper  some 
how;  it  was  a  task  from  which  flesh  and  spirit  recoiled. 
Burke  was  not  an  emotional  nor  imaginative  man,  but  for 
a  long  while  afterwards  he  saw  in  dreams  —  waking  drenched 
in  horror  —  a  Juggernaut  car,  monstrous,  inexorably  im 
pelled,  crushing  out  a  life  at  his  feet.  Darnell  had  been 
sitting,  cross-legged,  on  a  but-end  of  log  within  the  door  with 
his  gun  and  (alas!)  his  whiskey  bottle  between  his  knees, 
just  as  Nathan  remembered  him  hundreds  of  times  by  their 
evening  camp-fires.  A  lump  came  into  the  young  man's 
throat  as  he  thought  of  it.  Perhaps  Jake's  sorry  life  deserved 


150  NATHAN    BURKE 

as  sorry  an  end ;  but  the  miserable  fitness  of  it  stung  one  with 
a  deeper  pity.  I  have  known  in  my  life  worse  men  than 
Jake  Darnell,  who  did  not  have  half  his  faults.  And  if  he 
did  not  walk  so  well  as  he  might,  even  by  his  feeble  taper  — 
my  friends,  which  of  us  goes  without  stumbling? 

Nathan,  with  his  head  already  swollen  and  throbbing  fa 
mously,  went  back  to  the  tailor's  shop  and  found  two  or  three 
men  in  charge,  homely  Samaritans.  They  had  the  body 
decently  disposed  on  one  of  the  tailor's  benches,  until  a 
coffin  should  be  got  ready,  which,  of  course,  could  not  be 
done  until  the  next  day,  the  town  being  in  such  festivity. 
"  You  couldn't  git  a  carpenter,  fer  love  ner  money,  y'know  - 
'specially  fer  to  make  a  coffin,"  one  of  them  explained  to 
Burke.  "Well,  I  dunno  as  there's  anybody  kin  afford  to  wait 
better 'n  a  dead  person,"  he  added  with  a  meditative  glance 
at  the  shrouded  figure  on  the  bench.  "Hev'a  drink,  mis 
ter?"  And  Nat  declining,  he  took  one  himself  and  wiped  his 
mouth  on  the  back  of  his  hand  as  he  set  the  jug  down.  The 
watchers  were  philosophic  souls ;  they  had  a  table  spread  and 
a  bottle  or  two  and  a  greasy  pack  of  cards  in  the  back  part 
of  the  establishment,  and  proposed  to  make  a  comfortable 
night  of  it.  The  short  February  afternoon  was  already  clos 
ing  in,  and  the  procession  was  at  last  over;  the  hurrahing 
was  over;  the  crowds  were  dissolving;  Nat  felt  as  if  he  had 
lived  an  age  since  morning.  Asking  for  Nance,  he  heard  with 
relief  that  the  tailor's  wife  had  taken  her  under  protection, 
when  the  Williams  family  were  obliged  to  start  home.  And 
the  tailor  —  they  were  Germans  by  the  name  of  Lauterbach 
—  living  over  his  shop,  Burke  went  upstairs  and  found  the 
family,  kind,  slatternly  people,  the  tailor  a  shrivelled, 
meagre  man  and  his  wife  very  fat  and  sentimental,  weep- 
ingly  pressing  a  glass  of  beer  on  Nance  as  the  girl  sat  upright 
in  a  corner. 

"  Ach,  so  haf  she  set  —  so  she  haf  been  since  — "  said  the 
tailoress,  making  an  expressive  gesture  with  her  inverted 
thumb  to  the  floor  below.  "  You  also  haf  a  hurt  by  your  head 
got  ?  "  Nathan  went  and  sat  down  by  Nance  and  took  her 
passive  hand.  She  looked  at  him  with  her  big  black  eyes, 
and  the  young  man  was  struck  as  often  before  by  something 
inscrutable  in  their  glance  or  in  the  girl  herself;  she  might 
have  been  a  young  sphinx  in  her  corner,  grave  and  tranquil. 


NANCE   BEGINS   THE   WORLD  151 

There  was  a  kind  of  pagan  serenity  in  her  self-control,  a 
resignation  not  expressed  by  any  creed. 

"It's  all  right,  Nat,"  she  said  quite  composedly;  "I  don't 
feel  like  cryin'  'bout  Pap.  I  reckon  he'd  lived  his  time.  I 
jest  want  to  set  still  an'  think  about  him." 

"I  wish  he  could  have  died  some  other  way,  Nance,"  said 
Burke.  The  commonplaces  of  condolence  did  not  come  flu 
ently  to  him;  he  was  more  moved  by  horror  and  compassion 
than  by  sorrow  for  the  dead  man,  and,  whether  kindly  or 
not,  could  say  no  more  than  he  felt.  "You  —  you  didn't 
see  it,  did  you  ?  " 

She  said  no,  not  all  of  it.  She  had  seen  her  father  fall, 
but  not  —  not  the  rest;  and  she  asked  with  a  painful  ear 
nestness  if  he  thought  Darnell  had  suffered. 

"The  doctor  said  not,"  Nat  told  her,  and  seeing  relief  in 
her  face,  went  on.  "He  said  he  must  have  died  instantly. 
I  —  I  don't  believe  he  even  knew  he  was  in  danger,  Nance," 
said  the  young  fellow,  not  realizing  until  the  words  were  out 
that  he  was  bunglingly  revealing  a  conviction  he  had  meant 
in  humanity  to  keep  to  himself. 

"Yes.  I  know.  Pap  was  drunk,"  Nance  assented.  "I 
couldn't  keep  him  from  it,  ye  know." 

"I  — I  didn't  mean  — 

"Never  mind,  Nat,"  she  said  gently,  "I  knew  you  knew. 
'Twan't  no  use  tryin'  to  hide  it.  We've  all  got  to  git  up  an' 
tell  what  we  know  at  th'  inquest,  ain't  we  ?  Truth  can't 
hurt  Pap  now ;  nor  it  couldn't  while  he  was  alive  even. 
Truth's  truth.  'Tain't  noways  so  shameful  a  man  sh'd 
drink,  anyhow.  But  if  'twas,  th'  shame's  in  doin'  th'  thing 
—  'tain't  in  havin'  folks  know  'bout  it,  seems  to  me."  And 
with  this  piece  of  sound  philosophy,  she  fell  silent  again, 
brooding. 

"I  want  him  buried  with  his  ol'  rifle  —  they's  a  corner  in 
th'  cabin-lot  at  home  that  he'd  like,  I  know,"  she  said  after 
a  while  in  answer  to  a  question;  "mebbe  'tain't  Christian, 
but  I  kinder  'low  Pap  would  lay  easier  with  that  rifle  —  lil^e 
Injuns  do,  ye  know,  Nathan.  I  ain't  hardly  ever  seen  Pap 
without  his  gun  —  seems  to  be  a  part  of  him,  somehow.  I  — 
I  reckon  ye  kin  make  th'  city-folks  understan'  that,  can't 
ye  ?  An'  he  wouldn't  want  to  be  in  no  spruced-up  grave 
yard,  ye  know;  he'd  ruther  layout  in  th'  woods,  like  he  lived." 


152  NATHAN    BURKE 

Burke  understood  her  feeling  ;  to  him,  too,  it  seemed  as  if 
the  old  backwoodsman  would  be  better,  even  in  death)  re 
moved  from  the  settlements  which  in  life  he  had  shunned  or 
visited  only  to  his  undoing.  Nat  undertook  to  make  all 
these  arrangements.  "Th'  folks  here  are  mighty  kind  — 
mighty  kind  and  good,"  Nance  said  with  a  weary  glance  at 
the  half-closed  door,  where  two  or  three  of  the  Lauterbach 
youngsters  were  peeping  through  a  crack  at  us.  Mrs. 
Lauterbach  had  shooed  them  all  out  of  the  room,  together 
with  herself  and  the  tailor,  in  deference  to  the  mourners' 
conference.  "  They  're  jest  as  kind  as  they  know  how  —  but 
they  don't  know  much,"  said  the  girl.  And  then  she  asked 
with  some  appearance  of  interest:  " Nathan,  that  was  that 
little  skunk  of  a  George  Ducey  drivin'  that  carriage,  wasn't 
it  ?  Th'  one  you  brought  out  home  one  time,  tryin'  to  learn 
him  to  shoot,  don't  you  rec'lect  ?  I  was  sure  I  knowed  him  — 
I  didn't  see  none  of  th'  others  —  they  was  wimmen  'n' 
children,  wasn't  they?" 

"  Yes,  that  was  George.  But  he's  not  —  that  is,  he's  noth 
ing  but  a  boy,  and  he  was  frightened,  you  know,  Nance  — 
he  didn't  know  what  he  was  doing,"  Nat  explained,  noting 
with  surprise  the  scorn  in  her  tone. 

Nance  shook  her  head.  "Don't  know  why  you  stand  up 
fer  him,"  she  said.  "That  boy  ain't  got  any  grit,  Nat  — 
you  know  it.  Ef  it  had  'a'  been  his  own  mother  settin'  in 
Pap's  place,  he'd  acted  jest  th'  same.  He  ain't  got  any  grit, 
an'  he  ain't  got  any  too  much  sense,  either.  You  kin  git 
along  'thout  grit,  Pap  useter  say,  an'  you  kin  git  along  'thout 
sense,  but  ye  can't  git  along  'thout  ary  one  or  t'other  of  'em. 
Pap  never  took  no  stock  in  that  boy  —  my,  I  remember 
him  laughin'  fit  to  kill  himself  over  you  tryin'  an'  tryin'  to 
learn  that  little  George  how  to  shoot.  An'  to  think  that  very 
boy  sh'd  be  th'  one  to  kinder  help  along  Pap's  dyin'  in  th' 
end."  A  passing  wonder  at  this  uncalled-for  and  gratuitous 
irony  of  fortune  showed  in  her  face. 

Nathan  could  not  deny  the  charge.  If  George  had  kept 
his  head,  the  tragedy  might  not  have  occurred.  Yet,  in  fair 
ness,  the  boy  could  not  be  blamed.  Nor,  for  that  matter, 
did  Nance  seem  disposed  to  blame  him  overmuch ;  she  recog 
nized  her  own  responsibility.  There  was  a  sanity  and  bal 
ance  about  the  girl,  even  in  a  calamity  whose  horrid  circum- 


NANCE   BEGINS   THE   WORLD  153 

stances  might  well  have  undermined  her,  that  commanded 
respect.  Not  stoicism  but  a  brave  reasonableness  governed 
her.  Only  once  did  she  flash  into  one  of  those  unaccountable 
outbursts  which  Nathan  remembered  so  well ;  it  was  when  he 
told  her  about  Mrs.  Ducey. 

"  Did  she  say  that,  Nat  ?  Did  she,  did  she  ?  "  Nance  cried 
out.  The  color  flared  in  her  white  face;  her  eyes  burned  with 
that  curious  reverence,  that  very  slavery  of  admiration  which 
Mrs.  Ducey  —  or  whatever  extraordinary  character  Mrs. 
Ducey  assumed  in  Nance's  own  transfiguring  vision  —  always 
aroused  in  her.  "Did  she  really  an'  truly  want  to  come  an' 
see  me,  Nat  ?  Did  she  want  to  take  me  to  her  home  ?"  She 
gazed  at  him,  with  parted  lips,  ecstatically. 

"Yes,  but  we  —  I  —  T  wouldn't  let  her,  you  know,  Nance," 
said  Nathan,  guiltily,  feeling  that  he  had  made  a  mistake. 
"I  thought  maybe  you  wouldn't — " 

"Oh,  Nathan,  I'd  do  anything  for  her,  I'd  go  anywhere 
she  said!" 

The  tailor's  wife  let  Nat  out,  and  lighted  him  down  the 
rickety  stair,  wiping  her  lips,  with  a  baby  grasping  a  half- 
eaten  sausage  over  her  fat  shoulder;  and  with  many  sympa 
thetic  sighs  and  ejaculations  about  "Du  lieber  Gott,"  and 
the  "schone  madchen"  —  "you  are  —  vot  it  iss  you  say  ?  — 
versprecht,  hein  ?  to  be  married,  so?"  she  asked  eagerly. 
And  Mr.  Burke,  who  knew  —  and  knows  —  no  German,  had 
some  trouble  to  make  her  understand  that  such  was  not  the 
case;  he  left  her  benevolently  smiling,  still  unconvinced. 

To  tell  the  truth,  the  question  of  Nance's  future  had  al 
ready  begun  to  occupy  Burke's  mind.  Darnell's  death  left 
her  absolutely  alone  in  the  world;  Nat  himself  knew  what 
that  solitary  estate  meant,  and  he  did  not  need  to  be  told 
how  much  worse  it  would  be  for  a  woman  than  for  a  man. 
He  held  that  he  had  promised  her  father  to  take  care  of  Nance; 
even  if  he  had  not,  it  would  be  the  least  he  could  do  for  the 
sake  of  auld  lang  syne  and  the  countless  good  turns  poor  old 
Jake  had  done  him.  The  most  acceptable  solution  was  prob 
ably  the  one  she  herself  would  furnish;  to  go  back  to  the 
country  and  the  farm  where  her  father  had  squatted  and 
built,  and  live  there  —  and  doubtless,  Nathan  reflected, 
speedily  marry  some  young  man  of  the  neighborhood.  Or, 


154  NATHAN   BURKE 

perhaps,  to  take  refuge  with  the  Williamses  or  any  other  f am 
ity  thereabouts,  a  thing  which  was  often  done,  but  did  not 
seem  practicable  somehow  with  a  girl  of  Nance's  tempera 
ment,  any  more  than  going  out  to  service  here  in  town, 
another  alternative  which  occurred  to  Nathan.  This  was 
no  time,  with  her  father  still  lying  unburied,  to  talk  to  her 
about  ways  and  means,  however  —  let  to-morrow,  for  the 
moment,  at  least,  take  care  of  itself,  he  thought. 

The  streets  were  still  crowded  with  people,  the  taverns 
receiving  and  discharging  scores  of  patrons,  the  bands  going 
full-blast  in  the  State-house  yard,  turn  by  turn.  Nat 
stalked  through  the  riot  with  his  aching  head,  and  if  he  had 
been  given  to  moralizing,  might,  I  daresay,  have  delivered  a 
very  pretty  sermon  on  the  hideous  shifts  and  contrasts  of 
human  life  —  something  which,  in  fact,  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Sharpless  did  that  ensuing  Sunday,  and  greatly  edified  his 
large  congregation,  a  few  of  whom  had  been  witnesses  to  the 
awful  occurrence  which  he  used  in  illustration.  There  was  a 
light  in  the  doctor's  office,  which  one  reached  by  a  stair  cling 
ing  to  the  outside  of  a  frame  building  that  stood  about  mid 
way  of  the  square  between  High  and  Third;  there  was  a 
grocery  store  in  the  lower  story,  I  remember  —  it's  all  gone 
long  ago,  and  a  theatre  has  been  built  over  the  place.  Burke, 
who  was  in  pretty  stout  health  all  his  younger  days,  had 
never  had  occasion  to  visit  a  physician  before;  he  mounted 
the  stair  and  found  Vardaman  sitting  rather  gloomily,  with 
folded  arms,  in  the  bare  little  room,  enveloped  in  clouds  of 
tobacco-smoke.  He  knocked  out  his  pipe  —  which  was  an 
odd  and  beautiful  foreign-looking  instrument  of  a  delicate 
ivory  color  with  a  female  head  and  bust  elaborately  executed 
thereon,  the  first  meerschaum,  in  fact,  which  Burke  had  ever 
seen,  and  he  eyed  it  with  corresponding  interest  —  the 
doctor  knocked  out  his  pipe  with  hardly  a  word  and  began 
operations. 

"It  will  make  a  slight  scar  —  we  let  it  go  a  little  too  long," 
he  said  after  he  had  set  in  a  stitch  or  two,  and  washed  and 
bound  up  the  wound,  "however,  that  won't  spoil  your  beauty 
much  —  you're  lucky  to  get  off  so  easily.  A  little  more 
towards  the  temple  and  I  fear,  sir,  there  would  have  been  a 
dead  — ?"  he  paused  in  the  act  of  drying  his  hands  on  a  very 
large,  clean,  white  towel,  and  surveyed  Nathan  keenly 


NANCE   BEGINS   THE   WORLD  155 

and  rather  whimsically  — "a  dead  lawyer?  a  dead 
doctor  —  ?" 

"Neither  one  —  a  dead  bookkeeper/'  said  Nat,  grinning; 
"an  accountant  with  Mr.  Marsh  —  I  mean  with  DUCEY  & 
COMPANY  —  "  he  added  hastily. 

The  doctor,  who  was  a  man  some  six  or  eight  years  Burke's 
senior,  with  a  lean,  harsh-featured  face,  eyed  him  again,  "I 
thought  I  remembered  seeing  you  before  somewhere,"  he  said; 
"it  must  have  been  at  Mr.  Marsh's  —  at  DUCEY  &  COM 
PANY'S,  I  mean,  of  course,"  he  finished  smoothly,  with  a 
perfectly  grave  side-glance. 

"That  wasn't  the  first  time,  though,  Doctor  Vardaman," 
said  Burke,  biting  back  a  smile. 

"Not  the  first  time?" 

"I  don't  suppose  you  remember  going  out  in  the  country 
once  five  or  six  years  ago  to  patch  up  a  boy  that  had  fallen 
out  of  a  hay-mow  and  put  his  shoulder  out  of  joint?"  Nat 
asked  him  a  little  shyly. 

Vardaman  laid  down  the  pipe,  which  he  had  begun  to  clean 
preparatory  to  refilling,  and  looked  at  his  patient,  surprised 
and  interested.  "Why,  good  Lord,  yes,  I  do  —  I  remember 
it  very  well  now  you  speak  of  it.  I  had  forgotten  all  about 
it,  though,"  he  said  frankly.  "It  was  before  I  went  away  — 
went  to  Leipzig  to  study,"  he  added,  his  glance  falling  on  the 
meerschaum  as  if  it  served  to  remind  him.  "You  were  one 
of  my  first  cases  —  I'd  only  been  studying  a  couple  of  years 
then."  He  went  over  and  felt  Nathan's  shoulder  critically. 

"It  was  a  good  job,"  Burke  assured  him,  laughing.  And 
as  they  stood,  they  heard  a  foot  on  the  stair,  and,  without 
any  ceremony  of  knocking,  in  walked  young  Sharpless. 
"Hello,  Jack,  I  — "  he  began,  and  stopped  short  upon  seeing 
the  other. 

"Don't  you  know  this  young  man,  Jim?  I  thought  you 
knew  him,"  said  the  doctor. 

"Oh,  yes,  we've  met,"  Sharpless  said,  and  with  his  odd, 
illuminating  smile  he  went  up  and  shook  Burke's  hand. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  MAIL-BAG 

Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh  at 

Chenonville,  Avoyelles  Parish,  La.  (No  date) 

MY  DEAREST  MOTHER: 

Well  I  suppose  you  have  been  wondering  what  has  become 
of  us  all  this  long  while  but  I  have  simply  been  too  busy  to 
write  and  then  all  kinds  of  things  have  been  happening.  At 
first  I  thought  maybe  I'd  better  not  tell  you  for  fear  of  worry 
ing  you  but  that  didn't  seem  quite  right  somehow  and  I 
never  did  believe  in  keeping  people  in  ignorance  that  way 
so  I  may  as  well  come  right  out  flat  and  say  that  we  nearly 
had  an  aweful  accident  and  it's  a  blessing  and  a  mercy  we 
aren't  all  dead  this  minute.  Nobody  that  is  none  of  the 
family  was  even  scratched  though  so  you  must  not  get 
frightened. 

It  was  on  Washington's  Birthday  when  we  all  went  to  see 
the  Log-Cabin  parade  they  gave  here  in  the  grand  Whig 
Rally,  you  know.  They've  had  them  all  over  the  country 
so  I  suppose  maybe  you  had  one  too.  You  never  saw  any 
thing  like  this  town  for  the  whole  week  before  crowded  to  the 
very  roofs  and  some  people  they  say  sleeping  in  the  streets 
all  night. 

When  we  first  heard  about  the  procession  I  wanted  to  go 
down  and  look  at  it  from  the  room  over  the  store  but  Uncle 
George  was  so  disagreeable  and  plainly  didn't  want  us  there 
that  I  quietly  gave  it  up  without  having  any  fuss  with  him 
of  course  nor  any  argument.  Uncle  George  is  really  getting 
to  be  a  very  old  man  and  never  was  easy  to  get  along  with  as 
you  know.  I  can  tell  by  the  way  William  acts  that  he  leads 
them  a  life  at  the  store  and  William  simply  will  not  assert 
himself  he  has  such  an  idea  of  being  respectful  to  Uncle 
George.  He  can't  get  over  the  feeling  that  he  is  under  obli 
gations  to  Uncle  George  when  goodness  knows  there's  not 

156 


THE   MAIL-BAG  157 

another  man  in  the  world  who  would  put  up  with  poor  old 
Uncle  George  a  minute.  And  as  to  obligations  it  seems  to  me 
Uncle  George  owes  us  something  for  the  way  he  treated  you 
when  Pa  died.  I  have  heard  you  say  though  that  it  was 
always  dreadfully  hard  for  Pa  to  stand  him  so  you  can  imag 
ine  what  it's  like  now  and  especially  as  his  age  is  making 
Uncle  George  more  cantankerous  than  ever. 

However  as  I  say  I  didn't  have  any  words  with  him  it's 
so  much  better  to  be  calm  and  firm  and  not  squabble.  I  just 
made  up  my  mind  to  take  our  party  in  the  carriage  and  drive 
down  to  the  corner  of  Long  and  High  and  see  the  procession 
from  the  carriage.  Just  to  show  you  how  contrary  Uncle 
George  has  grown  to  be  the  minute  he  heard  about  it  he  began 
to  grumble  again!  The  trouble  with  him  was  he  had  gotten 
it  into  his  head  that  we  oughtn't  to  see  it  at  all  on  account  of 
the  crowds  or  something  and  I  suppose  there  were  some  dis 
reputable  people  among  them  but  what  difference  did  that 
make  to  us  ?  But  nothing  would  have  satisfied  him  but  for 
me  to  say  Well  we'll  stay  at  home.  I  just  went  on  and  made 
arrangements  without  bothering  about  him  any  more.  Nina 
Clarke  was  staying  here,  and  I  invited  Mrs.  Hunter  and 
Jennie  she's  just  Francie's  age  and  they  are  the  greatest 
friends  and  that  with  Nina  and  myself  just  filled  the  carriage 
with  George  driving  because  of  course  we  didn't  want  to 
give  up  a  seat  to  Joseph  the  hired  man  you  know  he's  not  a 
very  good  driver  anyhow  and  George  is  splendid  the  best  I 
ever  saw.  He  understands  horses  thoroughly  and  isn't 
afraid  of  anything  don't  you  remember  how  wonderfully  he 
used  to  ride  his  little  pony  ?  William  went  up  to  the  Neil 
House  with  a  party  of  friends.  He  would  have  come  with  us 
but  those  were  some  men  he  had  to  entertain  the  town  has 
been  full  of  visitors.  We  drove  down  to  the  corner  and  there 
was  a  perfect  jam.  The  other  people  in  carriages  had  had 
their  horses  taken  out  but  I  knew  ours  were  safe  only  I  think 
Joseph  must  have  fed  them  something  that  morning  that 
disagreed  with  them  and  made  them  fractious  George  says 
he  is  sure  of  it  because  they  began  to  prance  the  minute  they 
heard  the  first  band.  And  then  ever  so  many  people  were 
yelling  and  waving  their  hats  and  handkerchiefs  right  under 
our  horses'  noses  wouldn't  you  think  they  might  have  had 
better  sense  because  the  people  standing  around  so  close  were 


158  NATHAN    BURKE 

in  much  more  danger  from  the  horses  than  we  were  whenever 
they  began  to  cut  up.  Anyway  in  about  ten  minutes  there 
came  along  one  of  those  huge  floats  with  a  boat  on  it  life-size 
full  of  men  and  behind  it  another  with  a  brass  band  playing 
like  fury  and  then  one  of  the  Log-Cabins  on  a  float  all  to 
itself.  And  when  the  horses  saw  that  they  just  stood  right 
straight  up  on  their  hind  legs!  Georgie  was  as  cool  and  col 
lected  as  could  be  he  told  me  afterwards  his  heart  didn't 
even  go  one  beat  faster  I  tell  you  mine  did.  He  just  stood 
up  and  took  the  whip  to  them  and  called  out  in  an  encourage- 
ing  and  soothing  voice  but  the  people  were  screaming  so  I 
suppose  the  horses  couldn't  hear  him.  And  then  while  they 
were  prancing  and  before  he  could  get  them  quieted  along 
came  the  Log-Cabin  float  and  an  old  drunken  man  sitting  in 
the  doorway  and  I  suppose  he  got  frightened  seeing  the  horses 
so  close  and  he  fell  right  out  and  rolled  under  the  wheels  and 
broke  his  neck  wasn't  it  awful  ? 

I  kind  of  feel  as  if  it  were  partly  our  fault  because  of  course 
it  was  our  horses  but  William  says  for  me  not  to  worry.  I 
couldn't  have  helped  it.  And  I  am  sure  we  all  did  our  best. 
The  reins  got  jerked  out  of  George's  hands  somehow  and  he 
had  to  jump  out  and  was  going  to  run  up  and  grab  the  horses' 
bits  but  before  he  could  get  there  it  was  all  over  and  the  man 
was  killed.  George  was  terribly  shocked  so  he  couldn't  get 
out  of  bed  to  go  and  testify  before  the  coroner  the  next  day 
but  they  came  and  took  what  they  call  a  sworn  statement 
from  all  of  us  and  he  told  them  just  how  it  happened  as  he 
lay  in  bed. 

We  were  all  awfully  scared  and  Francie  fainted  dead  away. 
But  there  were  a  whole  lot  of  men  around  in  a  minute  and 
Jim  Sharpless  and  Doctor  Vardaman  came  and  helped  us  out 
and  you  ought  to  have  seen  that  smart  little  Jennie  Hunter 
fanning  Francie  and  wetting  her  forehead  and  doing  every 
thing  to  bring  her  around  just  as  capable  and  managing  like 
a  little  woman!  They  sent  for  William  and  we  all  got  home 
somehow.  I'll  never  want  to  see  another  procession  if  I 
live  to  be  a  hundred.  They  picked  the  poor  old  drunken  man 
up  and  took  him  away  somewhere  but  Ma  you  never  saw 
anything  like  the  girl  that  was  with  him  his  daughter.  She's 
a  perfect  beauty  tall  with  one  of  those  rich  olive  complexions 
and  lovely  features  and  great  black  eyes  only  about  eighteen 


THE   MAIL-BAG  159 

or  nineteen  years  old  I  think  with  the  most  graceful  figure  like 
a  statue  although  she  hadn't  on  a  sign  of  corsets  or  hoops- 
She  looked  just  like  that  beautiful  steel-engraving  of  the 
" Gypsy  Queen"  in  the  front  of  that  " Flowers-of-Loveliness " 
Annual  book  William  gave  me  last  New  Year's.  It's  the  book 
with  the  red  cover  all  over  gilt  scrolls  I  have  on  the  centre- 
table  in  the  parlor.  I  never  saw  such  a  magnificent  looking 
creature  as  she  was  as  she  stood  by  her  father's  body.  I  just 
couldn't  get  her  out  of  my  head  I  thought  about  her  all  night. 
They  wouldn't  let  me  speak  to  her  at  the  time  but  I  found 
out  all  about  her  from  Nathan  Burke  who  knows  her  it 
seems.  Her  father's  name  was  Darnell  and  hers  is  Nance  and 
Nathan  told  me  they  were  children  together  up  at  the  farm 
on  the  Scioto  where  he  comes  from.  I  went  down  and  had  a 
talk  with  Nathan  at  the  store  and  asked  all  about  her.  He 
said  her.  mother  died  long  ago  like  his  own  parents  and  Dar 
nell  was  very  good  to  him  when  he  was  a  little  fellow  he  said 
he  and  Nance  were  just  like  brother  and  sister.  She  was 
staying  with  the  people  where  they  took  her  father's  body 
named  Lauterbach  (Germans)  a  tailor.  So  I  said  Nathan  I 
want  you  to  take  me  straight  there  now  the  inquest  is  over 
before  she  goes  away  or  they  do  anything.  I  want  to  see 
that  poor  girl  and  what  is  she  going  to  do  now  her  father  is 
dead  do  you  know  ?  He  looked  worried  and  said  he  didn't 
know  and  perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  wait  until  Darnell 
was  buried  before  asking  her  any  questions  like  that  he 
thought  she  had  enough  to  distress  her  right  now.  But  I 
said  Yes  that's  very  well  meant  but  it's  a  mistaken  kindness. 
Our  duty  is  to  the  living  first  not  to  the  dead,  and  after  all  I 
daresay  when  she  thinks  about  how  drunk  he  was  all  the  time, 
she  feels  that  his  death  is  maybe  the  best  thing  that  could 
have  happened.  The  right  thing  to  do  would  be  to  find  out 
what  plans  she  has  made  and  whether  we  can  help  her.  He 
said  he  didn't  think  Nance  could  possibly  have  made  any 
plans  yet.  Well  then  I  just  told  him  I  can  help  her  that  very 
way.  I've  had  so  much  experience  and  I'm  very  good  at 
planning  and  directing  everybodj^  that's  ever  known  me  has 
always  noticed  it.  And  I  know  I  could  help  her.  And  be 
sides  I  feel  a  kind  of  responsibility  about  her  on  account  of 
the  way  her  father  was  killed.  It's  a  terrible  thing  for  a 
young  girl  like  that  to  be  left  alone  in  the  world  without  any 


160  NATHAN    BURKE 

father  or  mother  because  with  a  girl  of  her  class  it's  a  real  mis 
fortune  to  be  so  pretty.  So  he  gave  in  at  last  and  said  he  sup 
posed  women  knew  more  about  each  other  even  when  they  were 
strangers  than  any  man  could  and  so  he  went  with  me  and  left 
me  there  because  he  had  to  go  right  back  to  the  store.  I  wish 
you  could  see  Nathan  Ma  he's  so  much  improved  and  talks 
and  acts  just  like  a  man  you  know  he  always  was  rather  an 
old  acting  boy.  William  says  he's  a  very  fair  clerk  and  steady 
the  way  he  always  used  to  be. 

Well  the  Lauterbach  place  was  perfectly  awful  knee-deep 
in  dirt  and  swarming  with  children  and  I  had  to  tell  the  tailor- 
woman  Mrs.  Lauterbach  to  wash  off  a  chair  before  I  could 
sit  down  on  it.  But  really  that  poor  Darnell  girl  was  just  as 
beautiful  as  ever  even  in  that  horrid  hole  and  so  sweet  when 
I  said  I  don't  see  how  you  can  stand  this  nasty  place  she  said 
They're  very  good  to  me.  As  if  anybody  wouldn't  be  good 
to  her  the  poor  young  thing.  It  was  exactly  as  Nathan  said 
she  hadn't  an  idea  in  her  head  about  what  she  was  going  to 
do  next.  They  are  going  to  bury  her  father  out  there  in  the 
backwoods  and  she  said  Nathan  had  seen  to  everything  and 
would  help  her  take  the  body  out.  But  when  I  said  Why  my 
poor  child  you  haven't  got  any  mourning  have  you  ?  she 
looked  kind  of  bewildered  and  wan  ted  to  know  what  that  was? 
So  I  told  her  she  must  have  some  kind  of  black  dress  and  bon 
net  she  said  Pap  likes  me  in  red  just  as  though  he  were  in  the 
next  room  and  could  see  her.  I  told  her  I'd  get  her  some  black 
things  and  if  they  didn't  fit  we  could  alter  them  afterwards. 
And  then  I  just  went  on  and  told  her  what  I'd  planned  out 
for  her.  I  wanted  her  to  come  and  live  with  me  and  I'd 
teach  her  to  do  fine  sewing  and  be  upstairs-girl  and  a  sort  of 
maid  you  know  Ma  and  she'd  have  a  good  home  of  course 
not  very  much  wages  at  first  because  she  would  have  to  be 
taught  so  much  but  I  know  she  will  learn  soon  and  like  it 
and  be  happy  and  above  all  protected.  You  see  Ma  I  had 
thought  it  all  out  and  made  up  my  mind  before  I  went  to  see 
her  because  I  knew  she  couldn't  possibly  do  anything  that 
would  be  better  and  I'm  such  a  judge  of  girls  with  all  the  expe 
rience  I've  had  I  know  a  good  one  when  I  see  one.  I've  always 
had  to  teach  them  more  or  less  and  sometimes  pay  them  just 
as  high  wages  as  if  they  knew  everything  but  of  course  Nance 
won't  expect  that  so  that  it  will  be  a  wise  arrangement  all 


THE   MAIL-BAG  161 

around.  As  soon  as  I've  got  that  frightful  glaring  red  dress 
off  of  her  and  put  her  in  a  neat  black  and-white  dotted  calico 
with  an  apron  and  taught  her  a  few  things  she'll  be  the  best 
girl  we  ever  had  and  certainly  it  will  be  nice  to  have  some 
body  around  that  is  so  pretty  to  look  at.  The  last  one  had 
just  a  few  old  snags  of  teeth  left  tho'  she  was  a  young  woman 
and  was  so  slatternly.  Just  now  I  haven't  anybody  but  a 
woman  who  comes  in  by  the  day  and  you  know  that  is  always 
so  expensive  altho'  William  never  says  a  word.  I  wouldn't 
mind  if  one  could  only  get  a  little  work  out  of  them  but  this 
one  makes  a  dreadful  fuss  every  time  we  have  company  and 
Francie  and  I  have  to  make  all  the  beds  and  do  the  dusting. 
I  shall  feel  fixed  for  life  when  Nance  comes  she's  just  the  kind 
to  stay  with  us  forever  I  know  she's  so  appreciative.  When 
I  told  her  the  plan  the  poor  thing  was  so  happy  and  grateful 
it  was  touching.  She  kept  saying  You  want  me  to  come  and 
live  with  you  You  want  me  to  come  and  live  with  you  over 
and  over  again  and  looked  at  me  as  if  I  were  an  angel  from 
Heaven.  We  settled  it  right  then  and  there  and  she  is  to 
come  as  soon  as  her  father  is  buried  and  she  has  packed  up 
what  things  she  wants  from  their  cabin.  I  expect  she  hasn't 
got  a  great  deal.  She  doesn't  even  know  whether  the  farm 
they  lived  on  was  their  own  her  father  just  squatted  there  and 
I  guess  he  didn't  do  much  farming  only  fished  and  hunted 
when  he  was  sober  enough  to.  She  can  read  and  write  she 
says. 

William  says  it's  a  splendid  plan  but  then  he  hardly  ever 
finds  fault  with  any  of  my  plans  and  you  know  yourself  Ma  I 
seldom  make  mistakes.  But  what  do  you  think  happened  ? 
I  really  want  to  tell  you  this  for  it's  a  good  story  and  a  kind  of 
a  joke.  After  supper  that  evening  who  should  turn  up  but 
Nathan  Burke!  And  looking  very  much  like  a  gentleman 
too  I  told  him  so  because  I  knew  it  would  please  him  and  he 
colored  up  like  anything  so  I  could  see  he  was  perfectly  de 
lighted.  He  had  on  nice  clothes  and  you  know  he  has  rather 
high  thin  features  and  always  did  keep  his  teeth  so  clean  and 
white  and  has  a  clean  looking  skin.  But  when  I  saw  him  at 
first  I  was  dumbfounded  for  it  hardly  seemed  possible  that 
he  could  have  come  to  make  a  call  —  not  that  it  wouldn't 
be  all  right  of  course  but  you  know  one  can't  quite  forget 
that  after  all  he  was  our  hired  man  and  not  so  very  long  ago 


162  NATHAN   BURKE 

either.  The  minute  I  saw  him  I  thought  Good  Gracious  he 
can't  have  come  to  see  Francie!  She's  getting  to  that  age 
and  has  spindled  up  like  everything  this  last  few  months 
you'll  hardly  know  her.  However  it  seemed  Nathan  hadn't 
come  to  see  her  altho'  he  spoke  to  her  of  course  when  he  came 
in  but  after  we  sat  down  he  began  on  me  right  away  without 
any  beating  about  the  bush  Mrs.  Ducey  is  this  true  what 
Nance  tells  me  that  she  is  coming  here  to  live  ?  I  said  Yes. 
Well  then  he  said  On  what  footing  ?  What  will  she  be  ?  I 
haven't  been  able  to  make  out  from  what  she  says?  Why 
Nathan  I  said  it's  just  as  simple  as  can  be  no  mystery  about  it 
at  all  and  I  told  him  the  whole  thing.  He  listened  without 
once  interrupting  or  saying  a  solitary  word.  But  after  I 
got  thro'  he  began  Ma  and  he  talked  and  talked!  I'm  sure  I 
never  expected  to  hear  him  do  so  much  talking.  He  said  he 
was  quite  certain  Nance  didn't  understand  in  the  least  what 
I  wanted  of  her  that  she  knew  nothing  whatever  about  ladies' 
maids  or  working  out  or  how  people  lived  in  town.  And  he 
didn't  believe  I  could  train  her  the  way  I  wanted  she  wouldn't 
be  a  servant  and  she  couldn't  be  a  companion.  He  said  he 
knew  her  thoroughly  and  she  wasn't  fitted  by  nature  for  any 
such  position  and  the  experiment  wouldn't  be  fair  to  either 
one  of  us.  He  said  You  know  Mrs.  Ducey  in  everything 
that  matters  in  all  the  important  things  you  and  Nance  would 
both  do  what  was  right  and  perhaps  sacrifice  yourselves  and 
your  own  feelings  without  a  murmur  but  it's  the  little  every 
day  things  that  count  when  people  live  together  in  the  same 
house  and  that  make  life  easy  or  hard.  And  when  you  think 
how  differently  you  and  Nance  have  been  brought  up  and 
what  different  ways  you  must  have  of  looking  at  things  it's 
not  to  be  expected  that  you  could  get  along  together. 

Did  you  ever  Ma  ?  That's  the  first  time  I  was  ever  told 
I  had  such  a  disposition  I  couldn't  get  along  with  anybody. 
And  by  Nathan  too  of  all  people  in  the  world !  Of  course  he 
didn't  say  it  in  so  many  words  but  anyone  could  see  that  that 
was  what  he  meant.  He  just  judges  of  course  like  any  other 
man  by  the  times  I  have  to  change  servants.  But  anyone 
that  lived  in  my  house  two  weeks  would  know  that  that 
wasn't  my  fault.  It's  these  horrid  girls  we  have  to  employ. 
Anyhow  I  said  to  him  Well  Nathan  I  never  expected  to  hear 
you  preaching  at  this  rate.  He  said  he  knew  that  he  took  a 


THE   MAIL-BAG  163 

great  deal  on  himself  to  interfere  but  that  her  father  had  once 
said  something  to  him  about  taking  care  of  Nance  and  he 
could  not  stand  by  and  see  us  go  into  this  plan  without  tell 
ing  us  what  he  thought  about  it  and  he  had  talked  to  Nance 
and  tried  to  persuade  her  out  of  it.  So  then  I  said  Well  what 
do  you  want  her  to  do  Nathan  let's  hear  your  plan  of  course 
it's  a  great  deal  better.  He  said  flat  he  hadn't  any.  I  said 
Well  it's  a  deal  easier  to  tell  people  what  not  to  do  than  what 
to  do  it  seems.  I'd  think  up  something  better  for  Nance  if 
I  were  in  your  place  before  I  came  here  and  raised  all  these 
objections.  He  said  no  doubt  I  was  perfectly  right  never 
theless  he  thought  neither  one  of  us  understood  what  we  were 
doing  and  that  he  ought  to  tell  us.  Why  I  said  Nathan  you 
talk  as  if  Nance  wasn't  going  to  be  happy  here  when  I'm 
doing  everything  I  can  to  give  her  a  good  home  and  make 
her  happy.  He  said  you  know  Mrs.  Ducey  people  would 
generally  rather  be  unhappy  their  own  way  than  happy  in 
somebody  else's. 

Well  I  can't  remember  all  the  argument  I've  only  given 
you  an  outline  of  it  here  but  I  stood  firm.  I  don't  lay  claim 
to  many  virtues  but  there  is  one  thing  I  know  I've  got  and 
that  is  strength  of  character.  All  our  family  have  that.  I  know 
when  I'm  right.  So  Nathan  at  last  went  away  and  Nance 
is  coming  just  the  same.  His  persistance  was  so  queer  I 
couldn't  imagine  why  he  took  the  whole  business  so  much  to 
heart  but  when  Georgie  heard  about  it  he  put  his  ringer  right 
on  the  root  of  it  at  once.  You  know  he  is  very  quick  and 
sometimes  alarms  me  with  his  keen  judgments  I  think  it's  a 
little  unnatural  at  his  age.  He  said  Why  I  shouldn't  wonder 
if  Nathan  was  in  love  with  that  Darnell  girl  and  he  don't 
like  to  think  of  her  being  our  servant  tho'  he  was  himself. 
That  would  be  just  like  him.  Why  I  said  of  course  I  don't 
know  why  I  didn't  think  of  that  before.  She's  a  beautiful 
girl  and  that  accounts  for  all  his  earnestness.  But  why  don't 
he  marry  her  and  be  done  with  it  ?  George  said  he  guessed 
he  couldn't  afford  to  be  married  yet.  And  then  Francie 
burst  out  in  the  most  furious  way  that  we  didn't  either  of  us 
know  a  thing  about  it  and  that  Nathan  was  not  ashamed  of 
having  been  our  hired  man  he  was  above  it  and  he  was  not 
in  love  with  the  Darnell  girl  and  if  he  was  it  was  none  of  our 
business  and  then  she  got  so  excited  and  crying  I  had  to  send 


164  NATHAN    BURKE 

her  to  bed.  I  told  her  for  form's  sake  that  she  must  apologize 
to  me  for  being  so  rude  but  you  know  Ma  she  never  will  and 
I'll  just  have  to  pass  it  over.  She's  nothing  but  a  child  and 
got  into  a  temper  about  nothing.  I'm  a  little  afraid  for 
Francie's  disposition  anyhow  she  seems  so  stubborn.  I  don't 
know  where  she  gets  it.  Dear  Sister  Connie  was  always  the 
sweetest  gentlest  creature  on  earth  and  gave  in  to  everybody 
except  that  one  time  when  you  refused  to  let  her  marry 
Francis  and  she  shut  herself  in  her  room  and  wouldn't  eat 
anything  nor  speak  to  anybody  and  got  us  all  so  frightened 
and  then  ran  away  after  all. 

I  must  close  this  terrific  long  letter.  I  don't  know  whether 
you  can  read  some  of  the  pages  where  I've  crossed  them. 
Love  to  everybody  from 

Your  devoted  child  ANNE. 

Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 
Mrs.  Stevenson  Desha  at 
Frankfort,  Ky. 

May  21,  184- 
MY   DEAR   LITTLE   SlSTEB   BETTY, 

Ma  arrived  safe  and  sound  and  looking  better  than  I  ever 
saw  her  which  speaks  volumes  for  your  Kentucky  fried 
chicken  and  hoe-cake.  I  wish  I  had  some  this  minute. 
Letty  Baker  and  the  children  came  with  her  but  they  won't 
be  here  long  as  Mr.  Baker  is  coming  to  take  them  East  to  visit 
his  mother  and  we'll  be  alone  again  in  a  couple  of  weeks.  I 
am  rather  glad  for  once  as  we  are  a  little  upset  in  the  kitchen 
department  and  that  girl  I  told  you  about  the  one  I  took  to 
train  is  not  much  good  there.  She  seems  willing  but  she  is 
rather  dull  and  has  fits  of  the  sulks  from  time  to  time.  And 
then  whenever  she's  had  one  of  her  tantrums  she  comes  crying 
like  everything  and  begging  my  pardon  in  the  most  awful 
tragic  way  as  if  she  had  killed  somebody  so  that  it  gets  my 
nerves  all  on  edge.  However  I  am  going  to  peg  along  and 
see  if  I  can't  civilize  her  in  time. 

You  seemed  so  surprised  to  hear  that  Georgie  was  at  home 
but  he  has  been  ever  since  Christmas  I  thought  you  knew  it. 
We  sent  him  to  Miami  University  in  the  fall  you  know  but  I 
soon  saw  from  his  letters  that  it  was  no  place  for  him.  So 
when  he  came  home  for  the  holidays  we  simply  had  him  stay 


THE   MAIL-BAG  165 

home  and  none  of  the  professors  have  ever  written  to  inquire 
or  seemed  to  care  in  the  least  bit  which  proves  what  Georgie 
says  that  tney  are  all  a  set  of  perfect  boors  no  manners  and 
no  ideas  of  the  world.  He  says  that  is  what  disgusted  him 
almost  from  the  start.  The  school  is  full  of  a  lot  of  rough 
young  fellows  farmer  boys  and  such  from  all  over  the  country 
not  at  all  the  sort  of  associates  we  should  select  for  George 
who  has  always  had  such  naturally  refined  ways.  George 
says  you  ought  to  see  the  style  they  dress  pantaloons  tucked 
into  their  boots  and  corduroy  pea-jackets  some  of  them.  You 
can  see  they  aren't  gentlemen  he  says.  One  example  will 
give  you  an  idea.  They  have  some  kind  of  club  just  started 
that  they  call  the  Beta  Theta  Pi  which  is  a  Hebrew  word 
meaning  the  Brothers  George  told  me  when  I  asked  him  it's 
perfectly  wonderful  what  a  taste  for  languages  George  has 
nothing's  too  hard  for  him  he  told  me  Hebrew  was  quite 
easy  to  learn.  Well  he  said  to  one  of  the  boys  in  a  perfectly 
polite  and  gracious  way  that  he  would  join  this  club  and  the 
boy  just  turned  round  and  growled  as  rough  as  could  be 
Better  wait  till  you're  asked !  And  George  says  that  was  the 
last  he  ever  heard  of  it  so  he  knows  that  boy  never  even  men 
tioned  it.  The  truth  is  George  says  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
jealousy  of  him  among  all  the  boys  in  his  class  and  of  course 
that  influenced  the  whole  school.  It's  natural  those  coarse 
young  men  should  dislike  anybody  who  is  so  well-dressed  and 
so  much  above  them  in  appearance  and  position  to  say  noth 
ing  of  his  leading  his  class  all  the  time  in  studies.  We  are  in 
hopes  it  will  be  different  at  Kenyon  College  where  we  have 
decided  to  send  him  next  fall.  George  is  quite  a  young  man 
now  going  out  to  see  the  girls  every  evening.  I  can  scarcely 
believe  that  I  am  the  mother  of  that  great  tall  long-legged 
thing.  He  has  a  latch-key  which  of  itself  makes  him  seem 
older. 

There  is  not  much  news  here  except  that  the  engagement 
between  Louise  Gwynne  and  John  Vardaman  has  been  broken 
off.  You  know  they've  been  engaged  a  year  it  happened 
last  summer  when  you  were  here  don't  you  remember  ?  I 
heard  the  whole  of  it  from  her  mother  about  the  quarrel  I 
mean  when  I  was  there  the  other  day.  It  began  last  winter 
with  a  fuss  they  had  at  the  procession  that  very  day  we  nearly 
had  such  a  terrible  accident  and  my  hired  girl's  father  was 


166  NATHAN    BURKE 

killed  I  wrote  Ma  about  it  at  the  time.  The  doctor  had  taken 
Louise  down  in  his  buggy  to  see  the  parade  and  then  when 
the  accident  happened  of  course  he  jumped  right  out  and  ran 
to  help  and  left  Louise  sitting  there  alone  for  nearly  an  hour 
with  the  crowd  all  around  and  she  was  perfectly  furious  and 
would  hardly  speak  to  him  afterwards  and  now  the  engage 
ment's  broken.  Of  course  it  must  have  been  disagreeable  for 
Louise  to  be  alone  there  all  the  while  a  young  girl  in  such  a 
conspicuous  position  but  dear  me  nobody  had  any  time  to 
look  at  her  and  what  would  she  have  had  the  doctor  do  I'd 
like  to  know  ?  Some  women  are  so  unreasonable.  I  told 
her  mother  so  right  out  but  you  never  saw  anything  so  silly 
as  Marian  Gwynne  she's  just  like  a  tiger-cat  about  Louise 
and  you  can't  find  fault  with  a  single  thing  Louise  says  or 
does  Marian  is  right  up  in  arms.  She  thinks  Louise  is  per 
fect.  Of  course  Louise  is  an  only  child  and  all  that  Marian 
has  got  in  the  world  but  my  Georgie  is  an  only  child  too  for 
that  matter  and  we  don't  spoil  him  to  quite  that  extent.  I 
can't  help  feeling  sorry  for  Jack  Vardaman  he's  such  a  nice 
fellow  and  all  his  people  were  so  nice.  He  has  just  bought  a 
place  out  in  the  country  next  to  Governor  Gwynne's  and  was 
going  to  start  building  their  house  this  summer.  I  do  hope 
Louise  will  come  around  and  make  it  up  but  it's  not  likely 
she  hasn't  got  that  red  head  for  nothing.  And  besides  she 
has  a  lot  of  attention  from  the  men  and  it's  sort  of  turned  her 
head  I  think.  I  can't  understand  what  they  see  in  her. 

Talking  about  this  makes  me  think  of  Mary  Sharpless  you 
know  she  is  all  the  time  having  a  desperate  flirtation  with 
somebody  Mary  will  never  get  too  old  for  that  and  anyway 
she's  the  youngest  looking  thing  you  ever  saw.  Nobody 
would  say  she  was  a  day  over  twenty.  Everybody  says  Mary 
would  be  willing  to  console  Doctor  Vardaman  but  he  won't 
give  her  a  chance.  You  know  he  has  money  outside  of  his 
practice  and  money  is  what  Mary's  after.  It's  a  horrid  thing 
to  say  but  it's  true  and  somehow  I  can't  blame  her.  A  minis 
ter's  family  always  have  such  a  scuffle  to  get  along  and  never 
have  enough  to  live  on  and  Jim  doesn't  help  them  at  all.  I 
see  him  sometimes  on  the  street  and  oh  Betty  it's  aweful  my 
heart  aches  for  poor  Mrs.  Sharpless  Jim  looks  so  seedy  and 
disreputable  tho'  I  never  saw  him  drunk  but  I  haven't  a 
doubt  he  is  often.  He  doesn't  live  at  home  any  more  since 


THE   MAIL-BAG  167 

he  had  that  awful  quarrel  with  his  father.  He  has  a  room  in 
some  horrible  low  place  down  town  and  writes  for  the  papers. 
The  trouble  was  you  know  he  told  Doctor  Sharpless  out  and 
out  he  didn't  believe  there  was  any  God.  Wasn't  it  terrible  ? 
Of  course  nobody  knows  what  else  he  said  I  suppose  he  don't 
believe  in  Heaven  or  Hell  either  anyway  Mr.  Sharpless  or 
dered  him  out  of  the  house  and  nobody  dares  mention  Jim 
before  any  of  them  now.  The  strange  thing  is  to  look  at  Jim 
you  wouldn't  believe  he  was  that  sort  of  a  man.  When  we 
had  our  accident  he  came  and  helped  us  and  was  lovely  I  don't 
care  who  hears  me  say  it.  I  went  around  and  told  everybody 
about  it  afterwards.  And  someone  said  to  me  Why  Mrs. 
Ducey  I  don't  see  how  you  could  let  that  man  touch  you 
don't  you  know  he's  a  blasphemer  and  an  Atheist!  I  just 
said  Why  I  couldn't  help  it  there  were  some  mighty  good 
Christians  standing  around  there  but  they  never  budged.  I 
never  could  help  liking  Jimmie  Sharpless  I  suppose  it's  a 
weakness  but  I  forget  all  about  how  bad  he  is  and  anyway 
I'm  not  the  only  one  because  they  say  Doctor  Vardaman  likes 
him  and  has  him  at  the  house  often  and  the  doctor  is  a  good 
Episcopalian. 

Good-bye  with  dearest  love  to  all  from 

Your  loving  sister 

NAN. 

Miss  Frances  Blake  to 
Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh  at 
Chenonville,  Avoyelles  Parish,  La. 

November  12,  1840 

MY  DEAR  GRANDMA, 

Aunt  Anne  is  sick  in  bed  with  a  cold  so  she  says  I  am  to 
write  this  time  as  she  doesn't  want  you  to  miss  hearing  from 
us  as  usual  once  a  week.  The  cold  began  a  week  ago,  bub 
she  took  some  medicine  New  London  Bilious  Pills  which  they 
say  will  cure  anything;  it  didn't  cure  her  however  and  Aunt 
Anne  says  she  can't  understand  why  people  will  deliberately 
advertise  and  say  their  medicine  will  do  this,  that,  and  the 
other  when  it  doesn't.  The  doctor  has  just  been  here  and 
says  she  will  be  all  right  in  a  few  days  now  and  she  particu 
larly  wants  me  to  say  to  you  that  the  cold  is  not  dangerous. 
While  she  has  been  sick  I  have  been  running  the  house,  and 


168  NATHAN    BURKE 

Uncle  Will  says  I  have  done  very  well.  I  oughtn't  to  say  7, 
though,  because  of  course  Nance  helped  and  wouldn't  let 
anybody  wait  on  Aunt  Anne  but  herself  and  kept  Aunt  Anne's 
room  beautifully.  George  being  at  college  there  wasn't  so 
much  to  do  in  the  house.  I  am  enclosing  his  last  letter  to 
Aunt  Anne  for  you  to  read  and  show  to  the  rest  of  the  family, 
but  she  says  please  be  sure  and  return  it  as  she  keeps  all  his 
letters.  They  are  not  going  to  have  George  go  to  college 
any  more  after  this  year.  I  believe  he  wants  to  stay  at  home 
and  study  medicine  with  Doctor  Vardaman. 

The  elections  are  all  over  in  this  State  and  I  suppose  nearly 
everywhere  else,  too;  I  don't  see  why  they  don't  have  them 
all  on  the  same  day  in  all  the  States ;  it  takes  so  long  to  hear 
about  them  this  way.  They  have  had  an  enormous  great  black 
board  in  front  of  a  place  down  town  with  things  like  this  on 
it:  "New  Hampshire  goes  for  Van  Buren"  "Another  Sweep 
ing  Harrison  Victory!  Georgia  Whig  by  10,000  majority!" 
It's  been  there  for  the  whole  two  weeks  while  the  elections 
were  going  on,  with  men  crowded  around  it  half  a  dozen  deep. 
It's  not  very  nice  to  go  down  town  but  I've  had  to  since  Aunt 
Anne's  been  sick,  and  nothing  happened  to  me.  One  day  as 
I  was  coming  home  with  a  big  package  I  met  Mr.  Sharpless 
—  not  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless,  his  son,  I  mean  —  the 
same  one  that  was  so  kind  to  us  when  we  had  all  that  trouble 
last  winter,  and  he  asked  me  if  he  couldn't  carry  my  bundle. 
Aunt  Anne  once  told  me  that  I  could  bow  to  him  but  I 
mustn't  talk  to  him,  but  the  way  this,  happened  I  couldn't 
very  well  help  it,  I  just  had  to  let  him  carry  it.  We  didn't 
have  very  far  to  go  anyhowr.  I  told  Aunt  Anne  when  I  got 
home.  I  don't  think  he  has  enough  to  eat  and  he  coughed  a 
good  deal.  On  the  way  we  met  Nathan  (Nathan  Burke,  you 
know)  and  he  said:  "Jim,  what  are  you  doing  out  a  day  like 
this?  Go  home  and  go  to  bed."  And  he  took  the  bundle  and 
said  he  would  take  care  of  me  the  rest  of  the  way.  Mr.  Sharp- 
less  laughed  and  coughed  and  said:  "Without  doubt,  Nat, 
you're  more  respectable  to  walk  on  the  street  with  a  young  lady. 
I  give  up."  And  looked  at  me  and  bowed  and  went  away.  So 
Nathan  took  me  home  and  I  asked  him  why  they  said  such 
things  about  Mr.  Sharpless  who  seems  to  me  to  be  very  nice; 
and  he  said:  "Because  they  don't  know  any  better."  I 
asked  him  if  they  were  friends,  and  he  said  "Yes,  great 


THE   MAIL-BAG  169 

friends  ever  since  we  first  met."  I  told  him  I  was  sure  any 
body  he  liked  must  be  nice,  and  he  laughed  a  little  and  then 
said:  "Francie,  you  are  a  dear  little  girl  and  always  were!  " 
And  we  shook  hands  at  the  door.  He  really  ought  not  to  call 
me  a  little  girl,  as  I've  got  on  long  skirts  now  because  Aunt 
Anne  said  I  was  getting  too  tall  to  be  in  short  ones  any  more. 
It's  because  he  knows  how  old  I  am;  Mr.  Sharpless  behaved 
exactly  as  if  I  were  a  grown-up  young  lady.  This  was  the 
only  adventure  I  had  going  out  by  myself,  and  you  can  see  it 
wasn't  a  very  exciting  one. 

We  are  all  so  glad  Mr.  Harrison  was  elected  and  Mr. 
Corwin  too.  I  told  Uncle  George  I  supposed  everything  was 
going  to  be  all  right  now  we  had  a  Whig  President  at  last, 
and  he  laughed  and  said  the  country  was  saved  for  about  the 
tenth  time  in  his  recollection. 

We  sent  George  a  big  box  for  his  birthday  as  he  says  the 
things  there  aren't  fit  to  eat.  Perhaps  you  won't  understand 
one  thing  he  says  in  his  letter  about  how  is  our  guest  getting 
along  ?  He  means  Nance  Darnell,  you  know.  George 
doesn't  like  her. 

I  have  to  stop  writing  now  and  go  see  about  Aunt  Anne's 
supper.  With  ever  so  much  love, 

FRANCIE. 
Mr.  George  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  William  Ducey. 

Gambler,  Ohio, 

November  5,  1840. 
MY  DEAR  MOTHER; 

I  omitted  my  customery  epistle  as  I  was  feeling  far 
from  well  at  that  time.  It  was  nothing  for  you  to  be  anxious 
about  however,  only  a  low  fever  for  a  few  hours  at  a  time 
with  an  ocasional  prolonged  shivering  fit  acompanied  by 
pains  in  the  back  of  the  head  and  eyes  and  an  aversion  to 
eating  ammounting  almost  to  nausea  and  some  other  trifling 
simptoms.  There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  typhus  fever  about 
here  but  of  course  that  may  have  nothing  to  do  in  connection 
with  my  alements  and  I  do  beg  and  entreat  of  you  not  to  give 
it  a  thought  if  you  miss  hearing  from  me.  I  don't  mean  to 
let  myself  get  sick  but  if  I  do  I  guess  I  can  pull  through  with 
out  troubling  you.  I  had  to  have  the  doctor  of  course  and 
the  last  time  he  came  he  said  '  Well.  Ducey  you  are  a  wonder. 
I  never  in  my  life  saw  such  fortatude.  Any  other  man  in  your 


170  NATHAN   BURKE 

place  would  be  making  his  will/  I  told  him  I  got  it  from 
my  mother  who  never  gave  up,  and  was  the  finest  and  strongest 
character  I  ever  knew.  He  said  he  envied  me  and  wished  he 
could  meet  you.  He  is  a  splendid  fellow  and  a  giant  in  his 
profession,  a  really  remarkable  man  to  be  buried  in  this  little 
out-of-the-way  hole  which  is  a  perfect  extingisher  for  genius 
and  abillities,  college-town  though  it  is. 

It  is  no  wonder  really  that  I  have  an  aversion  to  eating  for 
the  table  here  is  something  execrable  altho'  I  am  at  the  best 
boarding-house  in  town.  However  I  suppose  I  will  get  used 
to  it  and  I  want  you  to  understand  you  are  not  to  worry 
about  me.  I  mean  to  get  along  somehow. 

I  suppose  your  guest  is  going  on  as  usual  and  making  the 
house  unpleasant  for  everybody  acording  to  her  habit.  If  I 
was  in  your  place  I  never  again  would  undertake  that  kind  of 
a  charity.  It's  thrown  away.  Those  country-people  are  a 
poor  lot  physickally  and  mentally  and  haven't  the  faintest 
idea  of  loyalty  or  gratatude.  I  saw  a  great  deal  of  them  the 
day  I  went  out  hunting  with  our  hired  man  Nathan  What's 
his-name  —  I  never  can  remember  the  fellow's  last  name. 
And  I  assure  you  they  were  all  common  to  a  degree. 

This  old  place  goes  on  the  same  as  I  wrote  you  before.  The 
professors,  I  regret  to  say,  altho'  they  make  a  little  better 
apearance  than  those  at  Miami  are  at  heart  exactly  the  same. 
They  are  dull  unfinished  fellows  that  couldn't  make  a  success 
at  the  Eastern  schools  so  have  drifted  out  here.  I  can  hardly 
keep  up  any  interest  in  the  lectures  or  recitations,  I  suppose 
because  I  am  rather  in  advance  of  my  class  and  the  other  men 
of  my  age.  They  look  at  me  in  'perfect  wonder;  and  to  be 
plain  don't  like  it  very  much.  I  have  been  so  much  amused 
to  see  some  of  the  instructors  fairly  quale  and  look  anxiously 
around  when  I  came  in  and  took  my  seat.  You  see  they  are 
afraid  I  am  going  to  ask  questions  which  they  can't  answer 
as  that  has  happened  several  times  and  nothing  takes  a  pro 
fessor  down  so  much  as  to  have  that  happen  in  class.  They 
just  can't  stand  it,  and  regard  me  as  an  enemy.  They  really 
don't  care  to  have  bright  men  in  their  classes.  They  would 
a  great  deal  rather  have  very  ordinary  pupils  who  they  can 
lecture  and  dictate  to,  and  who  believe  every  word  they  say. 
I've  investigated  this  college  question  thoroughly  now,  and 
this  is  my  mature  judgement. 


THE   MAIL-BAG  171 

The  people  here  as  is  always  the  way  in  such  places  make 
their  living  off  of  the  students  so  that  my  very  modderate 
pocket-money  don't  go  very  far.  It  takes  almost  all  of  it  for 
washing,  mending,  candles,  firewood,  and  ct.  However  don't 
worry  nor  send  me  any  more  as  with  pinching  and  scrimping 
I  can  make  out.  For  instance  I  can  go  without  a  fire  except 
the  very  bitterest  days,  and  even  then  I  could  wrap  up  in  my 
overcoat  as  I  sit  here,  and  that  would  be  quite  a  saving.  I 
meant  to  have  a  pair  of  boots  re-soled  but  I  guess  I  can  man 
age  without.  The  only  thing  is  I  am  a  little  afraid  of  catching 
cold  as  they  are  really  too  thin  for  this  weather,  and  I  don't 
want  to  get  another  of  these  attacks.  But  I've  got  a  good 
constitution  and  would  probably  survive  it.  I'll  not  deny 
that  I  like  to  apear  well-dressed  and  show  these  bumpkins 
what  a  gentleman  should  look  like  but  even  with  my  small 
means  I  look  better  than  any  of  them.  And  I  have  been  a 
good  deal  surprised  to  have  some  of  them  come  up  and  tell  me 
I  had  the  most  polished  manners  they  ever  saw.  I  didn't 
suppose  they  would  appretiate  it. 

Now  please  don't  worry  about  my  having  so  little  money  or 
being  sick.  I  shall  be  delighted  to  get  home  for  Christmas. 

Your  devoted  son, 

GEORGE  MARSH  DUCEY. 
Mrs.  William  Ducey  to 

Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh. 

December  1840 
MY  DEAR  MA, 

Your  letter  has  come  and  thank  you  so  much  for  returning 
Georgie's  so  promptly.  Did  all  the  family  see  it  ?  I  knew 
they  would  just  be  fighting  to  read  it  George's  letters  are 
always  so  ...  [word  illegible].  Oh  Mother  isn't  it  glo 
rious  to  have  such  a  son  ?  Do  you  notice  how  thoughtful 
the  dear  boy  is  about  me  and  how  he  struggled  to  keep  back 
anything  he  thought  might  pain  me  ?  Wasn't  it  noble  f  Of 
course  we  sent  him  fifty  dollars  right  away  and  I  am  not  going 
to  let  him  go  back  to  that  horrid  place  after  New  Year's  I'm 
sure  the  climate  and  food  must  be  perfectly  poisonous.  For 
all  he  is  so  brave  and  patient  you  can  read  between  the  lines 
and  see  how  he  was  suffering  when  he  wrote  that  letter. 
That  accounts  for  those  wrords  misspelled  I  know  his  head 
was  burning  so  he  hardly  knew  what  he  was  writing  and  I 


172  NATHAN    BURKE 

think  its  pathetic  his  anxiety  to  hide  it  from  me.  Anyhow  he 
don't  need  to  go  to  college  you  can  see  he  has  gone  farther 
than  any  of  the  teachers  and  they  can't  tell  him  much  of  real 
benefit.  Doctor  Vardaman  is  crazy  for  him  to  come  home 
and  go  into  his  office  to  study  medicine.  The  doctor  doesn't 
say  much  you  know  but  when  I  suggested  it  you  should  have 
seen  his  face  light  up  !  All  he  said  was,  Why,  if  George  has 
any  bent  for  it  certainly  Mrs.  Ducey  I'll  take  him  and  give 
him  a  trial.  Jack  Vardaman  is  always  so  careful  and  reticent. 
In  the  meanwhile  something  very  disagreeable  has  happened. 
It's  a  good  lesson  to  me  never  again  to  attempt  any  reforms. 
George  was  perfectly  right  as  usual  in  his  estimate  of  the 
Darnell  girl's  character.  I  only  wonder  why  I  was  so  blind 
for  so  long.  You  know  I  was  quite  sick  with  a  bad  cold  the 
first  of  the  month  and  poor  Francie  had  to  run  the  house  all 
by  herself  the  child  is  not  in  the  least  to  blame  as  she  couldn't 
be  expected  to  see  to  everything.  I  might  have  suspected 
something  myself  when  I  saw  how  unnaturally  devoted 
Nance  was  to  me  hardly  letting  anybody  go  into  the  room  or 
touch  me  but  herself.  Of  course  this  isolation  gave  her  op 
portunities  and  I  was  too  sick  to  notice  anything.  .  .  . 

(The  rest  of  this  letter  is  missing.  The  fragment  was  torn 
almost  in  two,  and  discolored  with  something  like  tea  or  coffee 
stains.  —  M.  S.  W.) 


CHAPTER  XIII 

WHICH  RAMBLES  CONSIDERABLY 

IN  after  years  Burke  used  to  recall  the  fruitless  effort  he 
made  to  direct  Nance  Darnell's  career  with  an  ironic  melan 
choly.  I  am  afraid  it  was  a  rather  priggish  and  pompous 
young  man  —  a  very  young  man  —  with  no  slight  sense  of  his 
own  importance  and  the  weight  of  his  judgment  who  went  up 
and  laid  his  adverse  arguments  before  Mrs.  Ducey  that  even 
ing  when  he  found  out  the  ill-starred  design  she  had"  formed. 
All  that  redeemed  him  was  his  devout  sincerity;  he  meant 
well,  he  thought  he  was  doing  his  duty.  Logic  and  common 
sense  sustained  him  (he  believed).  It  never  occurred  to  him 
until  he  faced  Mrs.  Ducey  in  her  sitting-room  that  logic  and 
common  sense  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter;  that  he 
might  as  well  appeal  to  the  laws  of  mathematics  and  gravita 
tion  for  all  the  effect  his  reasoning  would  have  on  this  pretty, 
warm-hearted,  impulsive,  and  unyielding  woman.  And  after 
all,  thought  Nathan,  as  he  walked  away  in  his  defeat,  how 
logical  and  how  sensible  were  his  objections  ?  Upon  a  stern 
examination  they  resolved  into  nothing  but  a  conviction  as 
deep-rooted,  yet,  without  doubt,  as  utterly  unreasonable  as 
any  Mrs.  Anne  could  possibly  hold,  that  she  and  Nance  would 
never  get  along.  He  could  no  more  argue  himself  out  of  that 
belief  than  he  could  argue  Mrs.  Ducey  into  it.  Nance  Dar 
nell  in  the  Ducey  household  !  The  idea  assumed  to  him  the 
likeness  of  a  wildly  disagreeable  joke,  a  goblin  trick  of  Fate  — 
but  unfortunately  that  would  not  be  a  thesis  calculated  to 
persuade  or  impress  anybody.  And  supposing  (he  said  to 
himself)  that  this  experiment  is  tried  and  fails  —  as  it  is  of  a 
surety  foredoomed  to  fail  —  what  then  ?  Why,  the  heavens 
will  not  fall.  Nance  will  go  elsewhere,  take  up  some  other 
way  of  life  —  that  is  all.  Nothing  tragic  about  that,  nothing 
to  stir  him  to  such  painful  anxiety.  Yet  he  remembered  the 
girl's  rapt  face  as  she  poured  out  to  him  this  astonishing  news 
with  a  sharp  sting  of  pity,  a  helpless  foreboding.  She  was  so 

173 


174  NATHAN    BURKE 

happy,  so  bewildered  in  admiration,  so  pathetically  uncon 
scious  of  what  Mrs.  Ducey 's  interest  really  meant,  that  Nat 
could  not  find  it  in  his  heart  to  darken  her.  In  truth  it 
would  have  been  almost  impossible  to  make  Nance  compre 
hend  exactly  what  Mrs.  Ducey 's  plan  as  regarded  herself  was; 
she  only  knew  that  she  was  to  live  in  the  house  with  her  god 
dess;  that  this  dazzling  creature  had  noticed  her,  liked  her, 
wanted  her,  was  enough  for  Nance.  The  backwoods  does  not 
prepare  young  women  for  a  useful  career  of  domestic  servi 
tude;  to  take  Nance  from  that  liberal  environment  and  fit 
her  to  a  neat  little  round  of  household  duties,  handcuff  her 
with  a  hundred  conventions  of  behavior,  of  class  and  social 
position,  would  be  not  merely  a  hopeless,  but  a  heart-breaking 
task.  And  certainly  Mrs.  Ducey  was  the  last  person  in  the 
world  who  should  attempt  it. 

What  would  happen  when  Nance  discovered  that  her  idol 
had  feet  of  clay  ?  That  dingy  tragedy  occurs  to  all  of  us  at 
least  once  in  our  lives.  Down  he  falls,  our  pet  deity,  out 
goes  the  altar-fire,  the  tripod  is  overset,  Lord  bless  me,  the 
sacrificial  vessels  are  nothing  but  gilt  tin,  the  wreaths  are  all 
faded  rags,  and  oh,  what  a  bitter  cup  of  disillusionment  has 
the  libation  become  !  We  all  get  over  it,  and  go  our  ways,  and 
by  and  by  erect  a  good  new  serviceable  god  of  whom  we  are 
careful  not  to  ask  too  much.  But  Nance  was  not  the  temper 
to  accept  this  good-humored  compromise ;  there  was  nothing 
easy-going  about  her  beliefs,  and  the  crash  of  her  temple 
would  be  a  grim  experience.  Nathan,  who  by  the  way  was 
not  indulging  in  these  fine,  high-flown  metaphors,  but  setting 
the  matter  before  himself  in  very  plain  and  sober  language, 
shrank  from  imagining  the  girl's  anguish  of  disappointment. 
He  said  all  that  he  could,  hinted  all  that  he  could  to  dissuade 
her.  I  think  he  protested  too  much.  But  he  might  have 
sworn  upon  a  stack  of  Bibles:  " Nance,  your  angel,  Mrs. 
Ducey,  is  no  angel  at  all.  She  is  a  very  good  woman,  but 
she  is  impatient,  she  is  tyrannical,  she  is  inconsistent,  she  is 
obstinate,  she  is  as  thoughtlessly  brutal  as  a  child.  She  is 
interested  in  you  not  for  yourself,  for  about  your  character 
and  individuality  she  cares  no  more  than  if  you  were  her  pet 
canary,  but  because  the  spectacle  of  a  creature  so  beautiful 
and  so  destitute  moves  her  to  that  kind  of  philanthropy  which 
is  neither  more  nor  less  than  benevolent  meddling.  In  a 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  175 

little  while  she  will  forget  all  about  your  good  looks ;  you  will 
be  to  her  like  her  marquetry  desk,  which  is  a  lovely  thing  but 
a  nuisance  to  take  care  of.  She  will  be  out  of  patience  with 
your  rough  ways,  your  uncouth  speech  will  offend  her,  she 
will  weary  of  teaching  you,  she  will  not  understand  your  little 
aspirations  or  will  laugh  at  them,  she  will  walk  rough-shod 
over  your  spirit,  she  will  carelessly  insult  your  dearest  memo 
ries.  She  will  not  mean  to,  Nance,  her  intentions  are  the 
best  in  the  world  —  but  have  you  the  philosophy  to  remember 
that?"  And  what  good  would  this  handsome  long  oration 
have  done  ?  None  at  all,  and  Nathan  knew  it. 

No  plan  that  he  could  have  invented  would  have  seemed  to 
Mrs.  Ducey  better  than  her  own,  but  the  young  man  was  a 
good  deal  handicapped  by  the  knowledge  that  he  could 
think  of  none.  The  question:  "Well,  and  what  would  you 
have  Nance  do  ?  "  closed  his  mouth.  He  could  only  reiterate 
that  he  would  not  have  her  do  this.  He  was  fain  at  last  to 
give  up  the  problem,  to  let  matters  take  their  course,  yet  it 
was  with  a  consciousness  of  disloyalty  to  Darnell's  trust.  He 
promised  himself  that  he  would  see  Nance  often,  talk  to  her, 
help  her,  perhaps  try  to  explain  the  puzzling  conditions  of  this 
new  life  to  her.  The  self-conceit  of  these  resolves  fills  him 
now  with  a  derisive  impatience.  I  think  Mr.  Burke's  solemn 
preachifying  would  not  have  done  much  good;  but  indeed 
he  never  got  so  far,  for  on  the  few  occasions  when  he  saw 
Nance  while  she  was  a  member  of  the  Ducey  household,  some 
saving  sense  of  humor,  or  common  humanity,  I  hardly  know 
which,  restrained  him. 

The  truth  is,  Nat's  life  seemed  to  him  very  full,  busy,  and 
varied  at  this  time.  He  had  just  succeeded  to  Mr.  Quill- 
driver's  desk,  Mr.  Marsh  sent  him  to  Gallipolis  that  summer, 
to  Chillicothe,  to  Lancaster,  hither  and  yon.  He  talked  with 
great  men  in  their  counting-rooms,  and  wrote  long  letters 
and  carried  grave  reports  to  his  tough  old  chief  chewing 
tobacco  by  the  stove  in  the  back  office  of  DUCEY  &  Co. 
The  old  man  liked  and  trusted  him  in  his  harsh,  measuring 
way.  When  he  heard  that  the  young  fellow  was  studying  law, 
he  commended  that  ambition;  he  himself  advanced  the  ten 
dollars  with  which  Nathan  took  out  a  notary's  seal  —  he 
did  not  give  it,  in  spite  of  his  hearty  approval,  for  that  would 
have  been  contrary  to  Mr.  Marsh's  notions  of  a  proper  busi- 


176  NATHAN   BURKE 

ness  discipline.  "It'll  come  handy,  Nat;  it's  a  kind  of  con 
venience  for  me  to  have  a  notary  right  here  in  the  store. 
1  S'-help-you-God,-forty-cents,'  hey?  Ho,  ho!"  he  said, 
chuckling.  "  You  ought  to  charge  'em  forty  cents  every  time 
you  swear  'em,  you  know.  I  guess  you  can  write  contracts 
and  conveyances,  too,  by  this  time,  can't  you  ?  And  make 
out  an  abstract  of  title,  hey?"  And  Nat  acknowledging 
that  he  could,  and  did,  and  sometimes  took  in  a  little  money 
by  these  accomplishments,  old  George  nodded  his  head  ap 
provingly.  "  That's  right  —  always  have  more  than  one 
iron  in  the  fire,"  said  he.  In  other  talks  he  gave  Burke  the 
benefit  of  his  accumulated  worldly  wisdom,  letting  in  an  oc 
casional  sidelight  on  his  own  shrewd  and  calculating,  yet  not 
at  all  unkindly,  character.  By  degrees  and  in  odd  hours  at 
the  store  he  told  the  young  man  the  whole  of  his  hard,  ad 
venturous,  conquering  history;  it  was  not  the  least  interest 
ing  of  the  stories  which  have  been  confided  to  Mr.  Burke's 
extraordinarily  receptive  ear;  and  some  of  its  details  were  of 
real  use  to  him  in  later  years. 

"Know  how  I  came  to  settle  here?"  said  the  old  man. 
"Why,  it  happened  this  way.  I  came  up  from  N'Orleans 
the  summer  of  eighteen-twelve,  close  on  to  thirty  years  ago. 
I  was  at  Zanesville  when  I  heard  the  proprietors  —  there 
were  four  of  'em,  you  know,  that  had  undertaken  with  the 
Government  to  get  up  a  city  here  —  were  going  to  auction 
off  the  lots  on  the  town  site  the  first  part  of  June.  Soon  as 
I  heard  that  I  came  along  up  here  with  a  lot  of  others  and 
they  began  the  sale  the  eighteenth  —  the  very  day  the 
United  States  declared  war  against  the  old  country.  There 
weren't  anything  but  log-cabins  here  then,  but  they  had  the 
whole  place  laid  out  on  paper,  High  Street,  Town  Street, 
everything.  The  sale  went  on  for  three  days.  First  day 
I  did  a  little  buying.  Then  I  kind  of  hung  off  —  I  was  just 
waiting  'round,  you  know,  just  waiting  'round,  Nat,"  said 
the  old  fellow,  turning  his  quid  and  grinning.  "Second 
day  a  man  I  knew  come  to  me  and  says,  'Why,  Marsh, 
ain't  you  bidding  in  any?'  'I'm  bidding  some,'  says  I; 
'way  things  are  going,  I've  got  to  be  careful,'  I  told  him. 
'Why,  Lord,'  he  says,  'you  don't  have  to  pay  it  all 
down.  They  make  the  sales  by  title-bond,  you  know,  and 
you  don't  have  to  give  but  a  third  or  fourth  of  the  price  and 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  177 

they'll  take  your  notes  for  the  rest/  'I  haven't  got  any 
too  much  money/  says  I;  'I  just  thought  I'd  wait  'round 
a  little  —  just  wait  'round.'  Ye  see,  Nathan,  I'd  sized  up  a 
plenty  of  the  buyers,  and  thinks  I  to  myself:  ' Gentlemen, 
if  you've  got  the  money  to  take  up  those  notes  as  they  come 
due  annually,  I'll  be  surprised.  Some  of  this  property  will 
be  on  the  market  cheap  inside  of  three  or  four  years,  or  my 
name  ain't  George  Marsh.'  And,  by  damn,  Nat,  that's 
exactly  what  happened.  I  settled  right  down  here  to  keep 
my  eye  on  it.  'Twas  going  to  be  a  kind  of  a  lengthy  business, 
but  I  didn't  know  any  better  way  to  put  in  my  time.  In 
about  two  years  more  than  a  third  of  the  lots  had  come  home 
to  roost,  as  you  might  say.  Some  fellow'd  make  a  payment 
and  put  out  all  the  cash  he  had  on  an  improvement,  and  that 
would  bust  him  up.  The  lot  would  fall  back  to  the  pro 
prietor.  Well,  the  lots  being  in  the  proprietors'  hands  and 
their  giving  time  on  the  payments  kind  of  kept  prices  up  — 
that  is,  from  two  to  five  hundred  dollars  a  lot  —  for  four-five 
years.  I  just  kept  waiting  'round.  Once  in  a  while  I'd 
go  off  to  Cincinnati,  or  N'Orleans,  or  N'York,  but  mostly 
I  stayed  here.  Then  finally  two  of  the  proprietors  failed 
themselves  —  and  then  maybe  there  wasn't  a  whaling  lot 
of  land  for  sale!  The  United  States  Marshal  and  Sheriff 
put  the  lots  up  at  forced  sale  after  they'd  appraised  and 
offered  'em  two  or  three  times,  and  money  was  so  scarce  in 
the  county  they  just  had  to  sell.  Some  of  'em  went  for  ten, 
fifteen,  twenty  dollars."  Old  George  jingled  the  coins  in 
his  pockets  significantly.  "That  Front  Street  piece  was 
one  of  'em,"  he  remarked.  "I've  sold  out  most  of  what  I 
bought  right  here,  but  some  I've  got  over  in  the  Refugee 
Tract  I've  held  on  to.  Funny  thing,  the  fellow  that  owned 
that  ought  to  have  made  a  good  thing  out  of  it,  for  he  bought 
it  himself  at  Sheriff's  sale,  but  I  guess  he  wasn't  much  of  a 
manager.  7  made  money  on  that  transaction,  Nat." 

Nathan  thought  he  deserved  to  profit.  The  picture  of  old 
George,  canny  and  patient  as  a  veteran  cat  at  a  mouse-hole, 
was  so  characteristic,  so  naively  humorous,  that  Burke 
laughed  with  a  deeper  relish  than  his  patron  suspected. 
These  manoeuvres  would  have  been  beyond  Nat's  own 
powers;  he  had  not  much  turn  for  affairs,  as  indeed  Marsh 
knew  perfectly  well.  It  wras  the  younger  man's  turn  for  hard 


178  NATHAN    BURKE 

work,  his  certain  integrity,  the  gift  of  plain  talk,  and  likewise 
the  gift  of  holding  his  tongue  that  won  his  senior's  favor. 
"  You're  doing  right  to  try  and  make  a  lawyer  of  yourself, 
Nathan,"  he  said,  not  without  a  touch  of  regret.  "It's  what 
you're  cut  out  for  —  you'd  never  make  much  of  an  out  at 
this.  You're  the  kind  of  man  people  naturally  talk  to  — 
they  want  to  tell  their  troubles  to  somebody,  and  they've 
got  a  feeling  you're  safe.  You  can't  put  that  into  men. 
You've  got  to  be  born  that  way;  and  it's  a  good  thing  to  be 
born  with,  no  difference  what  you  do,  whether  you're  a 
lawyer,  or  whatever  you  are."  He  finished  almost  with  a 
sigh  —  which  would  have  been  a  remarkable  evidence  of 
sentiment  from  old  George  Marsh.  It  may  be  he  was  think 
ing  of  his  unavailing  efforts  to  convert  into  "  safe  "  men  his 
brother  —  William  Ducey  —  or  even  young  George. 

Mr.  George  Marsh  Ducey,  to  tell  the  truth,  showed  the 
slightest  possible  disposition  towards  either  the  legal  or  the 
mercantile  career,  or  in  fact  a  career  of  any  sort.  He  was 
at  this  time  one  of  the  most  elegant  young  gentlemen  it  has 
ever  been  Burke's  lot  to  behold.  This  spring  and  summer 
having  returned  from  Miami  University,  a  seat  of  learning 
where  he  had  been,  —  as  he  very  soon  let  everybody  know, 
—  entirely  unappreciated,  he  used  to  visit  the  store  occa 
sionally,  and  even  had  a  desk  assigned  to  him  in  one  corner 
of  the  office.  At  least  an  hour  daily  did  George  occupy  this 
august  eminence.  He  came  down  about  ten  o'clock  of  a 
summer  morning,  languid  and  exquisite  in  snowy  white 
ducks,  with  the  dark  blue  coat,  the  marseilles  waistcoat 
delicately  dotted  with  pink  rosebuds,  the  rich  satin  scarf 
with  which  the  dandies  of  the  day  adorned  themselves. 
The  clerks  surveyed  him  in  measureless  admiration;  old 
Marsh  raised  his  shock  eyebrows  and  grunted  when  his  name 
sake  strolled  in,  affable,  Chesterfieldian,  illuminating  those 
gloomy  precincts  with  his  gracious  presence,  "shedding  fra 
grance"  like  the  gods  and  goddesses  in  the  Mneid.  George 
did  not  injure  his  health  by  too  close  application  to  business, 
thereby  following  out  his  mother's  anxious  injunctions.  His 
desk  was  a  miracle  of  neat  order,  and  after  he  had  read  the 
paper  nothing  else  of  moment  ever  occurred  to  disturb  it. 
He  went  home  to  dinner  at  noon,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the 
day  relaxed  in  what  he  himself  had  been  overheard  to  style 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  179 

"the  delights  of  female  society."  There  was  no  lack  of  that 
at  the  Ducey  house,  which  still  swarmed  with  visitors  as  it 
had  in  Burke's  day.  How  did  Nance  Darnell  get  on  amongst 
these  decorative  and  decorated  ladies  ?  George  spoke  of  her 
with  a  pleasing  patronage;  but  he  patronized  us  all,  from  his 
uncle  down,  and  I  fear  that  George's  opinions  and  sometimes 
his  reports  were  not  always  reliable. 

"That  Darnell  girl  has  a  dev'lish  tempah  —  the  tempah 
of  a  devil,  absolutely,  Nathan,"  he  remarked  casually, 
inspecting  the  other  with  his  soft,  dark,  expressionless  eyes; 
"told  her  to  black  my  boots  the  othah  day  and  she  flew  out 
of  the  room  like  a  wildcat  —  a  regulah  wildcat,  b'George  ! 
All  but  threw  the  boots  in  my  face.  Mothah  had  to  go  aftah 
her  and  ordah  her  to  do  it  —  she  generally  will  obey  Mothah, 
you  know.  B'George,  that's  the  kind  they  take  the  whip  to, 
down  South.  A  person  in  her  position  can't  afford  to  have 
that  kind  of  a  temper  —  tempah.  'Twon't  do  in  a  servant, 
you  know." 

Nathan  listened  in  silence,  biting  his  lips.  It  sometimes 
seemed  to.  him  that  George  made  a  point  of  detailing  these 
wretched  scenes  to  him,  forever  dragging  poor  Nance  into 
the  conversation,  and  flaunting  her,  as  it  were,  in  her  character 
of  menial  before  Burke's  face;  not  till  long  afterwards  did 
Nathan  find  out  the  reason.  A  greater  man  than  he  can 
ever  hope  to  be  once  said  that  the  jokes  of  dull  people  are 
always  cruel;  and  no  doubt  George  mightily  fancied  his  own 
powers  of  raillery,  took  it  as  a  dainty  bit  of  fun  to  remind  the 
ex-hired  man  of  his  humble  beginnings  and  of  the  no  less 
humble  situation  of  his  lady-love.  George  was  a  little  mis 
taken  in  his  estimate  of  Burke;  the  latter  was  not  in  love 
with  Nance  Darnell,  but  had  he  been,  and  were  Nance  ten 
times  a  servant,  Nat  would  have  felt  neither  shame  nor 
resentment  at  this  graceful  waggishness.  What  roused  him 
to  ineffectual  anger  and  pity  was  the  thought  of  the  poor 
girl  herself  with  her  fanatic  devotion,  her  ignorance,  her 
crooked  pride,  incongruously  subject  to  George  Ducey. 
We  may  talk  as  much  as  we  please  about  the  dignity  of  hon 
est  toil,  but,  sir,  how  would  you  like  to  black  the  boots  of  the 
man  you  despise?  "She  can't  stand  it  very  much  longer 
at  this  rate,"  thought  Nat,  and  wondered  at  the  vitality  of 
Nance's  feeling  for  Mrs.  Anne. 


180  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Mothah's  been  trying  to  teach  her  to  read  and  write," 
pursued  George,  in  the  mellow  drawl  which  he  carefully 
affected  of  late,  having  been  complimented  on  his  charming 
Southern  pronunciation  by  some  member  of  the  "  female 
society  "  wherein  he  shone;  "she  said  she  knew  how  when 
she  came,  but  really  she  didn't,  you  know.  Ton  my  word 
it's  ridiculous  —  regulahly  laughable.  She  brought  Mothah 
her  slate  with  'many'  spelled  m,  e,  double  n,  y,  you  know, 
and  Mothah  burst  out  laughing  —  Mothah's  full  of  fun, 
and  that  was  a  little  too  much  for  her.  Then  off  she  went  — 
Nance,  I  mean  —  in  anothah  tantrum!  Mothah  says  it's 
terribly  trying.  Just  think!  Francie  cried  —  never  could 
see  a  joke,  Francie.  Mothah  went  out  and  found  her  with 
Nance,  and  Francie  was  positively  crying." 

"  Francie  always  was  a  dear  little  girl,"  said  Nat,  huskily. 

"Yes.  Aw  —  by  the  way,  Burke,  don't  you  think  you'd 
—  aw  —  bettah  say  'Miss  Blake'  ?" 

"Why,  yes,  certainly,"  said  Nathan,  agreeably;  "I  had 
forgot  she  was  getting  to  be  a  young  lady." 

"And  —  aw  —  perhaps  you'd  bettah  stop  calling  me 
'George,'  you  know  —  ?" 

"Why,  are  you  getting  to  be  a  young  gentleman  ?"  asked 
Burke,  with  a  lively  surprise  and  interest;  "dear  me,  I  never 
noticed  it!"  —a  remark  which  George  received  without  at 
all  suspecting  that  it  was  capable  of  two  interpretations, 
so  that  Mr.  Nat's  fine  sarcasm  benefited  only  himself.  Even 
when  the  boy  irritated  him  most,  Nathan  could  always 
relieve  his  temper  by  some  such  speech,  secure  in  the  amused 
knowledge  that  George  would  never  understand  it.  There 
would  have  been  a  kind  of  brutality  in  using  severe  measures 
with  George  ;  something  curiously  feminine  in  his  feeble 
spitefulness  restrained  one.  You  could  not  be  angry  with 
a  creature  so  weak;  it  seemed  as  if  any  man  should  be  able 
to  withstand  his  pygmy  assaults.  It  was  only  when  George 
made  himself  a  serious  inconvenience  that  he  must  be  treated 
with  active  severity;  but  this  occurred  with  increasing  fre 
quency  during  the  latter  half  of  Burke's  tenure  of  the  head- 
bookkeeper's  desk  under  Mr.  Marsh. 

He  was  considerably  surprised  to  see  George  returning  to 
the  store  about  five  o'clock  one  evening,  an  hour  when  young 
Mr.  Ducey  was  most  often  to  be  observed  richly  gloved  and 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  181 

waistcoated,  fresh  curled,  oiled,  and  perfumed,  taking  the 
air  by  the  side  of  his  mother  in  the  family  carriage;  or  per 
haps  himself  escorting  one  of  the  favored  fair  in  a  high, 
fashionable,  two-seated  vehicle  which  had  lately  been  bought 
for  his  use.  George  was  a  great  ladies'  man;  terrific  was  the 
slaughter  his  eyes,  figure,  dress,  and  manners  had  wrought 
among  the  sex  —  he  said  so  himself  with  regret.  Not  in 
direct,  rough  words,  of  course,  but  exercising  that  species 
of  clever  and  well-bred  innuendo  of  which  he  was  the  master. 
So  when  this  conqueror  was  beheld  abandoning  his  natural 
field  at  the  most  propitious  season  for  the  grimy  and  gritty 
neighborhood  of  the  warehouse  and  its  shirt-sleeved  society, 
wonder  ran  among  the  ranks  of  clerks.  They  were  prepar 
ing  to  close  up;  the  elder  Ducey  had  already  gone  home. 
One  lad  was  sweeping  out  the  front  of  the  place,  while  an 
other  laid  the  dust  with  a  sprinkling-can.  Nathan  was 
posting  his  books  in  the  office,  his  lank  legs  wreathed  about 
his  stool,  the  familiar  aroma  of  codfish  and  'Sisal  hemp' 
ascending  to  him  in  cool,  earthy  gusts  from  an  open  hatch 
way  leading  to  the  cellar,  when  the  not  less  familiar  odor  of 
George's  millefleurs  and  Macassar  caused  him  to  look  up. 

" Hello!"  he  said  in  astonishment,  pausing  with  a  sus 
pended  pen.  "What  on  earth  are  you  doing  here?" 

"That's  what  every  single  one  of  those  boys  has  been 
saying!"  said  George,  peevishly;  "infernal  bad  mannahs,  / 
call  it.  WThy  shouldn't  I  be  here,  I'd  like  to  know?"  He 
came  in,  drawing  the  door  to  after  him  with  unusual  care. 
It  squeaked  aloud  on  its  hinges,  being  seldom  closed;  and, 
indeed,  the  wood  was  so  swelled  with  recent  dampness  that 
George  could  not  force  the  door  into  its  frame,  and  gave  up 
trying  to  latch  it  in  a  sudden  and  most  unnatural  burst  of 
temper.  "Oh,  damn!"  he  said,  flinging  himself  down  in  his 
uncle's  arm-chair;  he  threw  out  his  legs,  kicking  the  spittoon 
aside  viciously,  and  began  to  bite  his  nails  with  a  very  moody 
and  perturbed  countenance.  Nathan  looked  at  him  puzzled; 
George's  disposition  was  so  mild,  equable,  and  self-satisfied 
that  it  was  hard  to  guess  what  could  have  so  disturbed  him. 
"I  suppose  his  last  new  coat  doesn't  fit,"  said  Burke  to  him 
self,  and  turned  again  to  his  figuring,  not  being  much  given  to 
inquiring  into  other  people's  affairs,  which  they  were  generally 
only  too  willing  to  confide  to  him  unsolicited. 


182  NATHAN    BURKE 

"I  say,  Burke—  ''  George  began  after  a  momentary  si 
lence. 

Nat  finished  the  entry  and  raised  his  eyes.  "Well?" 
he  said  —  and  wondered  to  see  George  flinch  under  his 
gaze. 

"You  —  ah  —  you've  got  such  a  quick  way  of  moving 
your  head  and  eyes,  Nat,"  said  the  other,  with  an  uneasy 
smile;  "you  kind  of  take  a  fellow  aback.  I  guess  that's 
what  makes  you  such  a  cracking  good  shot,  hey?  I  was 
telling  a  fellow  the  othah  day  that  you  were  the  best  shot 
I  evah  saw.  ' There's  Burke/,  says  I;  'he's  got  an  eye 
like  a  rifleman,  wonderful,  b'George,  wondahful!'  'Why,' 
he  says  —  it  was  Billy  White  —  you  know  Billy,  don't  you? 
—  'Why,'  says  Bilty;  'Burke?  he  was  your  hired  man, 
wasn't  he?'  Said  it  just  that  way  —  kind  of  a  sneering 
way,  you  know,  Nat.  I  just  turned  right  'round  on  him. 
'Hired  man  be  damn!'  I  says;  'Nat  Burke's  a  gentleman, 
and  what's  more  he's  my  friend.  I  just  want  you  to  remem 
ber,  Bill  White,  that  anybody  that  says  anything  against 
him  says  it  against  me  I  '  I  wouldn't  have  him  talking 
that  way  about  you,  Nathan.  I  let  him  know  flat  I  wouldn't 
stand  it,"  said  George,  nobly. 

"I  don't  see  that  he  said  anything  against  me,"  said  Burke, 
returning  to  his  ledger. 

"It  was  the  way  he  said  it,  Nat;  it  was  his  mannah  — 
low-down  sort  of  a  fellow,  Bill  White  —  fathah  was  a  horse- 
doctah,  b'George!"  cried  George. 

"So  may  mine  have  been,  for  all  I  know,"  Nat  said, 
grinning.  He  closed  the  book,  wiped  his  pen,  and  began 
clearing  up  his  desk.  One  of  the  clerks  shouted  a  question 
at  him  from  the  front,  and  Nathan  shouted  back  directions 
as  he  sought  his  coat  and  hat  hanging  on  their  nail.  George 
watched  him  nervously. 

"I  don't  know  Avhat  fathah  and  Uncle  George  would  do 
without  you,  Nat;  positively  I  don't  believe  they  could  get 
along,"  he  said  earnestly;    "they  just  leave  everything  to 
you  and  go  off  when  they  choose,  don't  they?     Is  —  ah  — 
Uncle  George  now  —  he  isn't  around  anywhere,  is  he?" 

"I  think  he's  gone  home  —  I  saw  him  start  out,"  Nathan 
told  him.  "Did  you  want  to  speak  to  him  ?" 

No,  oh,  no,  George  didn't  want  to  speak  to  his  uncle.     He 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  183 

just  dropped  in  —  just  dropped  in,  you  know,  Nat.  He'd 
been  thinking  he  ought  to  get  down  to  the  store  more  regu- 
lahly,  but  he'd  been  sick.  He  was  sick,  you  know,  curse  it, 
sick  a  good  deal  of  the  time,  and  the  rest,  Mothah  would 
hardly  let  him  out  of  her  sight  —  or  the  girls  got  hold  of  him, 
you  know  how  girls  are.  He  smirked  faintly  at  the  last 
words,  and  pulled  up  his  shirt-collar  with  a  side-glance  into 
the  little  old  cracked  looking-glass  in  the  corner  where  the 
office-force  were  wont  to  straighten  their  plebeian  ties  and 
head-gear  before  going  out  on  the  street.  It  reflected  a 
sickly  pale,  anxious,  and  flurried  face  this  time;  and  Nathan, 
washing  his  hands  at  the  battered  stand  just  around  the 
partition  (such  being  our  inelegant  toilet-arrangements),  saw 
it  with  a  humorous  concern.  What  under  heaven  could 
be  the  matter  with  George  ?  He  certainly  had  not  come  all 
the  way  back  to  the  store  at  this  hour  of  the  day  to  retail 
complimentary  anecdotes  about  Burke's  career  and  char 
acter.  Whatever  his  purpose,  he  seemed  to  be  thoroughly 
at  a  loss,  groping  in  a  jungle  of  impulses,  amongst  which  the 
strongest  and  best  defined  was  apparently  to  propitiate 
Nathan.  And  the  latter,  who,  during  the  whole  of  his  life, 
had  never  felt  himself  under  the  necessity  of  propitiating 
anything  or  anybody  save  his  own  vigilant  conscience,  was 
at  once  repelled  and  interested  by  the  spectacle.  Even 
while  he  reflected  he  saw  the  other's  face  light  up  as  with  a 
new  and  brilliant  idea. 

"I  say,  Burke,"  he  began  again,  this  time  with  abundant 
confidence,  however.  "I  nearly  forgot  what  I  came  in  for 
-  funny  thing,  isn't  it,  how  one  gets  to  talking  and  forgets  ? 
Mothah  wants  to  change  a  twenty-five-dollar  bill,  and  she 
told  me  if  I  was  passing  by  to  stop  in  and  get  you  to  do  it. 
Four  or  five  dollahs  in  silvah,  and  the  rest  in  greenbacks 
will  do,  she  said." 

"  All  right,"  said  Burke,  moving  to  the  cash-drawer,  with  a 
passing  wonder  at  the  obliquity  of  George's  mental  processes. 
Why  not  say  his  mother  wanted  the  money  at  once  and  be 
done  with  it?  Why  not  —  ?  Nathan  paused  with  his 
hand  in  his  pocket  sorting  out  the  key;  he  turned;  George 
was  at  his  elbow  and  their  glance  crossed.  This  time  the 
smooth  brown  eyes  did  not  falter. 

"Mothah  said  — "  George  went  on  fluently. 


184  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Your  mother  gave  you  the  bill,  I  suppose?"  asked 
Nathan,  holding  out  his  hand. 

"Why,  no  —  just  like  a  woman,  wasn't  it?  She  forgot 
to  —  started  upstairs  to  get  it  out  of  her  desk,  and  then  went 
off  about  something  else.  My  grandmothah's  there  now, 
you  know,  and  they  get  to  talking  and  nevah  stop  all  day 
long.  But  it's  all  right,  you  know,  perfectly  safe.  I  should 
think  I'd  hardly  need  to  tell  you  that  here,"  said  George, 
with  a  touch  of  loftiness.  "Just  make  it  five  dollahs  in  silvah 
and—" 

"I  can't  give  you  any  money  that  way,  George,"  said  Nat. 
"Not  in  my  position,  you  know.  I'm  sorry.  I  guess  your 
mother  will  have  to  wait  till  to-morrow."  He  could  have 
laughed  but  for  a  kind  of  reluctant  contempt  he  felt  at  the 
chagrin  in  the  other's  face. 

"She  can't  wait  —  really  she  can't,  Nat,"  said  George, 
feverishly;  "she  —  she's  got  to  pay  a  bill  —  a  —  a  dress 
maker's  bill,  they  always  have  to  have  change  to  pay  a 
bill,  you  know.  Mothah  can't  bear  to  keep  work-people 
waiting  —  why,  you  know  that.  She  —  she  really  needs  the 
money." 

Nathan  leaned  against  the  desk,  surveying  him  silently. 
It  was  not  worth  while  to  answer;  he  wondered  with  an  ex 
traordinary  mixture  of  pity  and  shame  and  amusement  what 
George  would  do  or  say  next,  to  what  lengths  he  would  go. 

"Well,  aren't  you  going  to  give  me  the  money  ?"  demanded 
the  boy,  —  for  after  all  he  was  only  a  boy,  —  sharply. 

"No." 

"I'd  like  to  know  why,  Nathan  Burke.  That's  my 
fathah's  money  you've  got  locked  up  in  that  drawer.  It's 
—  it's  my  money,  by  God,  and  you  haven't  any  right  to  keep 
it  locked  up  when  I  want  it!"  shrieked  out  George,  losing 
his  self-command  under  this  strain. 

"I  thought  you  said  your  mother  wanted  it." 

"That's  what  I'm  saying  —  that's  what  I  mean.  I  —  I 
was  just  joking,  you  know,  Nat,"  said  George,  with  a  smile 
so  ghastly  it  moved  the  older  man  almost  to  compassion; 
"she  —  she  don't  quite  need  twenty-five,  she  could  do  with 
twenty,  or  —  or  fifteen.  Can't  you  —  ?  Only  fifteen, 
Nat  ?"  George  was  in  earnest  now  at  any  rate.  The  sweat 
stood  on  his  forehead;  he  made  small,  fluttering  gestures. 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  185 

It  was  incredibly  pitiful,  incredibly  mean.  He  saw  refusal 
in  Burke's  face,  and  flung  off  from  him  in  a  fit  of  womanish 
fury. 

"I  tell  you  what  it  is,  Burke,  you're  going  to  be  sorry  for 
this!  I've  only  got  to  lift  my  finger  —  yes,  I've  only  got 
to  say  one  word  and  out  you  go,  do  you  know  that  ?  D'ye 
suppose  my  fathah's  going  to  have  any  damned  impudent 
upstart  like  you  around  ordering  me?  You're  afraid, 
that's  what's  the  matter  with  you  —  you've  been  helping 
yourself.  S'pose  I  can't  see  that,  hey  ?  Is  there  twenty- 
five  dollars  in  the  drawer  —  is  there  ?  How  much  have  you 
been  nibbling  off  at  a  time?  How  long  —  ?"  he  stopped, 
gasping,  shrinking  back  against  the  wall  in  a  terror  so  des 
perate  it  reminded  Nathan  of  some  hunted  animal.  "Don't 

strike   me,  Nathan,  don't !      I  —  I  —  I    didn't  mean  it  — 
j » 

"I'm  not  going  to  strike  you,"  said  Burke;  "but  calling  me 
a  thief  won't  help  you  any,  you  know,  George.  What's 
the  matter  ?  Are  you  in  trouble  ?  Haven't  you  any 
money  ?  " 

"I  don't  owe  anybody,"  George  cried  out  eagerly;  and  at 
the  preposterous  naivete  of  this  lie  Nathan  could  not  keep 
back  a  smile.  "What  are  you  grinning  at?  I  tell  you  I 
don't  "  —he  stammered,  his  face  turned  clay-color,  he  almost 
cowered  in  the  corner.  And  upon  the  instant  in  walked, 
stalked,  stamped,  old  George  Marsh! 

It  answered  grotesquely  to  the  awful  scene  in  "Don  Gio 
vanni"  when  the  statue  enters.  The  old  man  must  have 
heard  every  word,  having  been,  as  he  afterwards  explained 
to  Burke,  occupied  in  sampling  a  consignment  of  spices  in 
the  cellar  almost  beneath  their  feet.  An  acute  sympathy 
for  George  invaded  and  took  possession  of  Nathan,  warring 
the  while  with  an  untimely  desire  to  laugh.  For  it  was  not 
at  all  funny.  The  boy  was  so  abject  in  his  fine  clothes, 
so  pitiable  with  his  weak  frame  and  face.  Mr.  Marsh  him 
self  was  quite  unconscious  that  his  entrance  supplied  the 
last  touch  of  melodrama;  he  had  merely  come  up  from  the 
cellar  when  it  suited  his  convenience,  and  now  stood,  breath 
ing  a  little  short,  for  he  was  a  heavy  though  still  sturdy  man 
and  the  steep  stair  had  winded  him,  and  eying  his  grand- 


186  NATHAN   BURKE 

nephew  with  his  small,  steady  old  eyes,  bedded  in  thick  folds 
and  wrinkles.  He  sat  down. 

" George,"  he  said,  not  unkindly;  "no,  stand  where  you 
are  —  don't  shake  that  way.  What  are  you  afraid  of  ? 
I'm  not  going  to  hurt  you  —  nobody's  going  to  hurt  you. 
You  want  money  ?  How  much  ?" 

"I  —  I  don't  want  any  money,  Uncle  George,  I  —  I 
wasn't  asking  for  money.  Mothah  wants — " 

Old  George  waved  his  hand.  "  Never  mind  that,"  he 
said  briefly.  "  You  want  money  ?  How  much?" 

"I  —  I  —  twenty-five  dollahs  —  or  thirty  —  thirty  dol- 
lahs,"  said  George,  recovering  somewhat. 

"Give  it  to  him,  Burke,"  said  the  old  man;  and  Nathan 
turned  again  to  the  cash-drawer,  not  greatly  surprised.  On 
the  other  hand,  George,  as  was  plainly  to  be  seen,  was- very 
agreeably  startled  and  relieved;  if  he  had  known  it  was  as 
easy  as  this,  he  would  not  have  wasted  all  that  painful  and 
circuitous  diplomacy.  By  the  time  Nathan  had  counted 
out  the  sum,  George  was  himself  again,  and  magnanimously 
accepted  it,  ready  to  forget  and  forgive. 

"Of  course  it  was  unfortunate  me  leaving  Mothah's 
check  at  home,  Uncle  George,"  he  explained;  "the  fact 
is  I'm  a  little  —  ah  —  careless  about  money  mattahs.  But 
you  acted  quite  right,  Burke,  quite  right,  to  refuse  to  give 
me  the  money.  I'm  sure  you're  very  reliable.  Only,  you 
see,  I  found  it  a  little  trying.  I  knew  it  would  be  all  right, 
but  you  weren't  here,  you  know,  Uncle  George,  and  though 
I  kept  telling  Burke  he  was  perfectly  secure,  still  he  wouldn't 
give  it  to  me.  Regulah  watch-dog,  b'George!" 

"I  heard  you,"  said  Mr.  Marsh.  He  drew  a  long  breath 
that  was  almost  a  sigh,  and  passed  his  coarse,  veined,  hairy  old 
hand  over  his  chin,  looking  up  at  his  nephew  thoughtfully. 
"Thirty  dollars  ain't  all  you  owe,  hey,  George?" 

"  Sir  ?     Why,  yes  —  that  is,  no  —  I  don't  owe  —  I  —  I  - 

"Nobody  ever  tells  all  they  owe,"  said  old  George,  calmly. 
"However —  "  he  made  a  gesture  in  which  Nathan  discerned 
a  certain  weariness,  and  sat  for  a  moment  rasping  his  fingers 
along  his  chin  and  staring  absently  at  or  through  the  young 
men,  as  it  might  be,  into  that  past  of  his  which  was  doubtless 
stocked  with  just  such  sordidly  trivial  scenes.  He  roused 
himself. 


WHICH   RAMBLES   CONSIDERABLY  187 

"Run  along,  George,  keep  out  of  trouble  —  if  you  can," 
he  said.  "Run  along,  I  tell  you.  Burke  always  sees  the 
place  shut  up." 

As  this  history  is  that  of  Nathan  Burke  and  not  of  Mr. 
George  Ducey  it  will  be  necessary,  with  whatever  regret, 
to  omit  an  account  of  all  the  scenes  similar  to  that  just 
recorded  in  which  the  latter  young  gentleman  figured.  It 
was  the  first  of  a  long  series;  for  if  there  ever  was  a  time  when 
George  was  not  in  need  of  money,  Burke  never  knew  of  it.  He 
had  a  handsome  allowance  which  he  invariably  anticipated 
to  the  last  penny;  it  was  increased  —  still  it  dribbled  through 
his  fingers;  increased  again,  yet  the  first  of  the  month  always 
saw  him  out  of  pocket  and  manoeuvring  with  a  curious 
fertility  of  cheap  excuses  to  get  more.  He  was  not  the  only 
young  fellow  who  has  suffered  from  an  inability  to  fit  his 
coat  to  his  cloth.  General  Burke,  who  is  a  pattern  old 
gentleman,  can  remember  a  certain  early  acquaintance  of  his 
sinking  various  sums  of  money  in  the  game  of  poker  —  at 
which  this  youth  greatly  fancied  himself  for  a  while  —  at 
one  period  of  his  interesting  career.  If  his  losses  were  after 
all  not  so  very  large,  they  were  still  more  than  he  had  means  to 
pay  out  of  his  compact  salary  of  bookkeeper;  so  he  went 
forth  and  pawned  his  overcoat  —  yea,  for  nine  dollars  and 
a  half  he  pawned  it,  with  a  greasy  old  Hebrew  who  heartily 
invited  his  patronage;  and  he  satisfied  that  debt,  and  never 
played  another  game  of  poker  for  twenty  years.  But  what 
became  of  George  Ducey's  money  ?  Perhaps  he  himself 
could  scarcely  have  told.  He  spent  it  on  nobody  but  George 
Ducey,  yet  he  had  no  vices.  No  one  ever  saw  or  heard  of 
George  being  drunk  or  playing  poker;  and  for  the  coarser 
indulgences  he  had  neither  the  health,  nor,  I  honestly  believe, 
the  taste.  He  was  not  in  the  least  a  good  fellow,  a  boon 
companion,  as  the  phrase  goes;  indeed,  he  had  few  close 
friends  of  either  sex,  although  he  cut  a  tremendous  dash 
socially,  as  I  have  attempted  to  describe.  He  could  dance 
beautifully,  his  dress  was  impeccable,  his  manners  over 
whelmingly  studied  and  exact  —  then  what  was  the  matter 
with  George  Ducey?  It  would  be  unjust  —  at  least,  so  it 
seemed  to  Burke  —  to  say  of  a  creature  so  harmless  that  he 
was  "no  earthly  good."  Yet  Nat  heard  that  said  of  George 
more  than  once.  His  mother  believed  him  perfect,  admired 


188  NATHAN    BURKE 

him  to  his  face,  hovered  over  him  with  a  thousand  touching 
maternal  cares.  More  than  likely  she  bestowed  on  him  all 
her  savings,  scraped  and  stinted  and  wore  old  bonnets, 
and  turned  old  dresses  and  went  through  all  a  woman's 
petty  tragedy  of  economy  and  management  to  provide  for 
his  whims,  bullied  her  husband  and  cajoled  her  uncle  into 
paying  his  bills,  —  nor,  with  all  this,  ever  allowed  herself 
to  perceive  of  what  poor  stuff  her  idol  was  compact.  About 
this  resolute  and  deliberate  blindness  of  women  there  is 
something  so  noble  and  pathetic  we  forget  its  desperate  silli 
ness;  we  even  lean  on  it  and  trust  to  it.  For  if  a  man's 
mother  will  not  stand  up  for  him,  where  shall  we  look  for 
faith  and  loyalty  ? 


CHAPTER  XIV 

IN    WHICH   WE    HEAR   A   LITTLE    MORE   ANCIENT   HlSTORY 

MR.  JAMES  SHARPLESS,  of  whom  mention  has  been  made 
pretty  often  herein,  and  whom  Burke  began  to  know  very 
well  about  this  time,  was  born  —  as  the  two  young  fellows 
found  upon  comparing  notes  —  in  the  same  year  with  Nat 
himself,  that  famous  year  of  the  big  squirrel-hunt,  at  Harris- 
burg  in  Pennsylvania,  where  his  father  happened  to  be 
stationed  in  cure  of  souls.  If  I  am  not  mistaken,  the  name 
is  native  to  that  State,  having  been  borne  with  honor  by 
many  stout  citizens  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  to  whom  Jim's 
father  was  undoubtedly  related.  The  elder  Sharpless  was 
already  a  middle-aged  man,  and  his  wife  no  longer  young, 
when  Master  James  entered  their  lives  with  his  disturbing 
personality.  "I  was  a  kind  of  a  postscript,  Nat,"  Jim  used 
to  say  in  his  reckless  way;  "Mary  —  my  sister  Mary,  you 
know  —  was  their  only  child,  and  she  was  ten  years  old. 
I  dare  say  they  didn't  expect  to  have  any  more,  when  I  came 
along  and  upset  everybody's  calculations.  Pretty  good 
chance  to  make  a  spoiled  little  brat,  wasn't  it  ?  Well,  I  am 
spoiled,  I  suppose,  according  to  father's  notions,"  he  would 
conclude  with  a  short  sigh. 

Not  long  after  his  birth  the  family  removed  to  Ohio, 
and  Jim  could  remember  no  other  home  than  the  little,  one- 
storied  frame  parsonage  beside  the  church  on  State  Street. 
It  was  a  cold,  simple,  plain  place;  the  minister's  salary  was 
not  large,  and  too  much  temporal  comfort  would  not  have 
been  becoming  to  his  cloth  and  calling  at  any  rate,  in  Mr. 
Sharpless's  rigid  belief.  They  were  in  no  danger  of  it ;  among 
Jim's  first  recollections  were  the  unceasing  activities  of  his 
mother,  patching,  mending,  devising  carpets  out  of  rags, 
bracing  up  lame  chairs,  tinkering  at  hinges  and  window- 
cords,  surreptitiously  laundering  underwear,  stealthily  car 
rying  out  ashes,  and  performing  other  duties  not  suited  to  the 
state  and  dignity  of  a  clergyman's  wife.  From  the  time  he 

189 


190  NATHAN    BURKE 

was  old  enough  to  sit  at  table  he  used  to  receive  and  obey 
with  a  humorous  understanding  secret  instructions  to  refuse 
butter  and  not  ask  for  a  second  helping  of  anything,  whether 
joint  or  pudding.  Mrs.  Sharpless  accomplished  prodigies  in 
the  way  of  making  her  own  and  Mary's  clothes,  and  cutting 
down  her  husband's  for  the  little  fellow;  once  Jim  furiously 
attacked  an  older  and  bigger  boy  who  had  dared  to  offer 
some  disparaging  comment  on  the  paternal  trousers  as  they 
appeared  nicely  adjusted  to  the  filial  legs.  He  came  home 
from  school  blubbering  with  rage,  with  a  black  eye  and  a 
bleeding  nose  —  and  incontinently  received  extra  chastise 
ment  from  his  father's  cane,  and  was  locked  in  the  woodshed, 
supperless,  to  reflect  on  the  Sin  of  Temper.  I  fear  this 
dungeon  became  sadly  familiar  to  young  James  as  the  years 
advanced;  he  was  forever  falling  foul  of  the  authorities, 
domestic  or  foreign,  on  one  point  or  another,  and  used  to 
take  his  beating  and  imprisonment  in  a  stoic  silence  which 
of  itself  afforded  proof  to  his  father  of  the  lad's  obdurate 
and  stiff-necked  disposition.  Original  sin  undoubtedly 
encompassed  his  son,  the  parson  thought  with  sorrow,  and 
girded  himself  up  and  warred  against  it  unswervingly.  Once, 
in  passing,  Jim  pointed  out  to  Burke  the  shed  of  penance, 
and  a  little  window  which,  he  said,  was  over  his  father's  desk 
in  the  minister's  study.  "That  was  where  I  used  to  get  my 
correction,"  he  said;  "it  was  pretty  frequent.  Mother 
would  be  crying  in  the  next  room  —  heigh-ho!" 

It  is  doubtful  whether  the  head  of  the  household  observed 
at  all  those  small  devices  by  which  his  wife  sought  to  make 
both  ends  meet  and  keep  a  decent  front,  in  the  stern  spiritual 
exaltation  with  which  he  pursued  his  religious  vocation.  He 
was  shut  up  in  that  shabby  study,  deeply  busied  with  his 
books,  his  theological  treatises,  and  the  terrifying  eloquence 
of  his  sermons  from  morning  to  night.  The  little  boy  held 
his  breath  and  went  on  tiptoe  past  the  door.  He  described 
to  Nathan  how  he  figured  God  in  a  solemn  isolation  with 
books  and  a  table  and  a  formidable  black  cane  like  his  father; 
and  wondered  how  the  company  of  the  blest  with  their  harps 
and  noise  could  be  allowed  in  that  austere  neighborhood,  or 
what  sort  of  accommodations  would  be  provided  in  heaven 
for  people  like  his  mother,  who  was  always  so  brave,  cheerful, 
gay,  ready-witted,  and  tender.  Jim  spoke  of  her  with  an 


A  LITTLE  MORE   ANCIENT   HISTORY       191 

admiring  affection  that  touched  the  other  young  man  to  the 
heart;  and  indeed  when  Burke  came  to  know  Mrs.  Sharpless, 
he  thought  his  friend's  enthusiasm  well-grounded,  and  saw 
in  the  son  not  a  few  of  the  mother's  kindly  and  winning  and 
eminently  humane  traits. 

It  will  have  been  seen  that,  notwithstanding  the  accepted 
theories  about  these  late  arrivals,  Jim  grew  up  under  as  severe 
a  discipline  as  could  have  been  wished.  The  Reverend  Mr. 
Sharpless  was  an  earnest,  heart-searching  man,  and  the 
gospel  which  he  preached,  and  for  which  he  would  have  gone 
to  the  stake  with  unflinching  fortitude,  was  not  one  of  tender 
ness  or  toleration.  He  was  afraid  to  spare  the  rod,  although 
he  could  not  have  applied  it  with  any  relish.  A  just  man, 
he  labored  hard  under  the  burden  of  his  parental  responsi 
bilities,  racked  his  soul  with  prayers  for  guidance  —  and  still 
felt  his  child  elude  him.  A  less  conscientious  father  might 
have  succeeded  better.  One  could  have  believed,  according 
to  the  reverend  gentleman's  own  grim  creed,  that  the  two 
were  foreordained  to  disagree.  Jim  must  have  been  a  quick, 
bright,  puzzling,  and  puzzled  youngster;  he  asked  questions 
and  drew  inferences  with  that  staggering  infantile  logic 
before  which  we  have  all  stood  confounded  and  subtly 
amused.  But  to  the  father  whose  literal  imagination  pre 
sented  God  and  the  devil  in  a  concrete  personal  presence  and 
power,  it  doubtless  often  seemed  as  if  the  last-named 
prompted  Jim  to  his  discomfiture.  The  child's  very  precoc 
ity  was  a  menace  to  his  salvation,  in  his  elder's  alarmed  view. 
When  he  was  no  more  than  six  or  seven,  Jim,  having  got  hold 
of,  or  been  given  a  copy  of  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  came  in  his 
reading  to  that  part  of  the  narrative  where  Crusoe's  efforts 
to  convert  his  savage  to  Christianity  are  set  forth  with  all 
Defoe's  veracity  of  imagination  and  seizing  simplicity.  "If 
God  so  much  stronger  than  devil,  why  God  no  kill  devil?" 
asks  Friday,  innocently  —  and  honest  Robinson  is  hard  put 
to  it  for  an  answer.  Who  would  have  supposed  that  "  Robin 
son  Crusoe"  would  be  a  book  to  corrupt  the  young?  But 
Mr.  Sharpless,  finding  Jim  brooding  over  this  passage,  took 
and  locked  it  away  from  him  in  disapproving  and  foreboding 
horror  —  an  act  than  which  nothing  could  have  been  better 
calculated  to  fix  and  emphasize  the  ideas  Man  Friday  had 
suggested  to  the  boy's  mind.  A  hundred  times  the  poor 


192  NATHAN    BURKE 

father  thus  defeated  his  own  ends;  a  miserably  perverse 
fate  governed  all  their  relations,  and  when  he  heard  that 
sorry  tale  of  years  of  misunderstanding  and  tyranny  and 
rebellion,  Nat  Burke's  heart  ached  for  them  both.  Without 
doubt  there  was  a  strong  similarity  between  the  two  char 
acters  ;  and  it  is  sad  to  think  of  these  two  brave,  turbulent, 
honest  spirits,  each  incapable  of  compromise,  doomed  to  be 
eternally  at  odds.  The  present  generation  would  find  Jim's 
heretical  views  —  which  the  boy  very  early  arrived  at  and 
boldly  pronounced  —  not  at  all  shocking,  scarcely  even 
noticeable,  so  far  have  we  advanced  (or  strayed  from,  which 
you  choose  !)  that  narrow  road  in  which  the  Reverend  Sharp- 
less's  feet  were  set.  So  my  son  is  honorable,  is  kind,  is  tem 
perate,  just,  and  manly,  I  ask  few  questions  about  his  creed; 
and  if  he  finds  solace  and  inspiration  in  some  certain  form  of 
worship  or  in  none  at  all,  I  do  not  try  to  bend  him.  But  in 
Jim  Sharpless's  young  days,  the  Lord  was  a  jealous  God; 
the  fires  and  tortures  of  the  Place  of  Punishment  were  very 
real,  much  more  real,  somehow,  than  the  jewellery-box  decora 
tions  of  the  Place  of  Reward  —  and  that  both  localities  ac 
tually  existed,  I  am  sure  Mr.  Sharpless  and  every  other  good 
church-member  never  doubted.  "The  trouble  with  all  the 
creeds  is  that  not  one  of  the  people  who  invented  'em  had  a 
sense  of  humor,"  Jim  used  to  say  —  a  remark  which  then  — 
and  perhaps  now  —  would  cause  the  hair  of  the  orthodox 
of  whatever  denomination  to  stand  on  end.  The  world 
was  made  in  seven  days  —  the  Serpent  invaded  Eden  — 
the  sun  went  back  on  the  dial  of  Ahaz  —  the  walls  of  Jericho 
tumbled  down  incontinently  at  the  trumpets'  sounding. 
Young  Jim  Sharpless  irreverently,  blasphemously  denounc 
ing  these  statements  as  untrue,  or  as  not  adding  in  the  least 
to  the  majesty  of  the  Creator  even  if  they  were  true,  scan 
dalized  the  community.  "Juggling  with  wine  and  water  to 
accommodate  a  lot  of  carousing  Jews  at  a  wedding  is  a  mighty 
cheap  business  for  God  to  be  about,  it  seems  to  me,"  declared 
the  unfortunate  boy  —  could  Satan  himself  have  said  worse  ? 
We  may  believe  Jim  suffered  for  his  levity  —  if  it  was  levity. 
In  any  other  cause  he  would  have  been  esteemed  an  honorable 
martyr ;  the  best  of  faiths  could  not  have  asked  a  more  devoted, 
self-sacrificing,  courageous,  and  inflexible  adherent  than  was 
Jim  to  his  sacrilegious  opinions.  It  was  strange  to  Burke  — 


A   LITTLE  MORE   ANCIENT   HISTORY          193 

who,  truth  to  tell,  was  always  content  enough  to  take  religion 
as  he  found  it  and  never  had  the  time  or  disposition  to  specu 
late  —  it  was  strange  to  him,  I  say,  to  witness  his  friend's  fierce 
and  painful  strivings,  his  relentless  search  for  some  spiritual 
rock  of  rest  and  truth.  Ever  since  he  was  old  enough  to 
think  independently  at  all,  Jim  said,  the  struggle  had  gone 
on.  What  distress  it  had  caused  his  father  and  himself, 
who  knows?  "But  I  can't  help  it,  Nat,  I  can't  help  it," 
the  young  man  would  burst  out.  "I  can't  subscribe  to 
his  childish  beliefs.  I  can't  accept  his  mean,  bargaining 
deity.  When  I  was  a  child  —  yes,  when  I  was  twelve  years 
old,  I  rebelled  against  it.  I  wouldn't  say  my  prayers  because 
I'd  caught  God  —  my  father's  God  —  cheating.  They  told 
me  He'd  give  me  anything  in  reason  I  wanted  if  it  was  good 
for  me  to  have  it.  So  I  prayed,  reasonably  enough,  it  seemed 
to  me:  'Oh,  God,  please  don't  let  me  have  any  more  sore 
throats!'  (I  used  to  have  'em  cruelly,  you  know  —  do  still, 
for  that  matter.)  Did  God  hear  me  ?  He  may  have,  but 
I  had  the  sore  throats  just  the  same,  and  that  was  enough 
forme.  I  wanted  Him  to  act  on  the  square,  /do;  you  do. 
Why  not  God?  If  He  were  to  come  on  earth  and  apply  His 
principles  to  running  Mr.  Marsh's  store,  He  wouldn't  stay 
in  business  a  minute.  It  was  too  one-sided,  I  thought,  when 
I  was  a  poor  bewildered  little  boy,  trying  to  make  head  or 
tail  of  it  all.  I  wanted  somebody  to  explain  the  manifest 
injustice  I  saw  all  around  me  and  make  it  agree  with  what 
I  heard  about  the  infinite  justice  of  the  Almighty.  What 
did  I  get  ?  Why,  another  manifest  injustice,  a  whipping  and 
bread-and-water,  in  the  woodshed.  I  swear  I  wasn't  a  bad 
boy,  Nathan,  in  spite  of  what  you  must  have  heard  —  I 
only  wanted  to  know.  I  don't  think  I'm  a  bad  man;  but 
God  can't  hire  me  to  be  good.  I've  about  stopped  wanting  to 
know.  I  give  it  up;  I  can't  see  any  purpose,  beneficent  or 
otherwise,  in  the  universe  —  I  have  to  let  it  go  at  that.  I 
don't  know  why  we're  all  here,  nor  where  we  came  from, 
nor  whither  we're  going,  and  I  solemnly  believe  no  man  on 
earth  has  ever  found  out.  I'm  doing  my  best  to  please  my 
own  conscience  and  live  up  to  my  own  standards,  and  I  don't 
care  a  jot  about  God's.  It  stands  to  reason  He  wouldn't 
be  any  kinder  nor  fairer  nor  saner,  if  He  existed  at  all,  in 
the  hereafter  than  He  is  here;  and  the  very  best  of  church- 


194  NATHAN   BURKE 

men  has  occasion  daily  to  wonder  at  His  doings  with  us. 
You  can't  relie  on  Him  a  minute.  An  honest,  kind-hearted 
man  would  do  better.  Do  I  shock  you  ?  Of  course  I  shocked 
my  father.  It's  what  I  said  to  him  that  last  flare-up  we  had 
when  he  ordered  me  out  of  the  house.  Oh,  we'd  had  hun 
dreds  before  that;  it  was  wrangle,  wrangle  all  day  long  ever 
since  I  was  fifteen  —  too  old  for  any  more  canings.  I  don't 
see  how  my  mother  stood  it;  she's  just  as  near  an  angel  as 
they're  ever  made,  I  guess.  She's  come  to  me  with  tears  in 
her  eyes  and  begged  me  wouldn't  I  try  a  little  —  just  try 
—  poor  mother  !  She  only  wants  me  to  be  on  good  terms 
with  father,  you  know,  in  the  bottom  of  her  heart  she  doesn't 
care  what  I  believe,  and  if  I  fell  as  low  as  Lucifer,  she'd  love 
me  just  the  same.  But  how  could  I  go  into  a  church  and 
pray  ?  I'd  lose  my  own  self-respect  —  I'd  as  lief  start  out 
to  cheat  a  man  in  a  horse-trade.  I  said  to  father:  'Why, 
don't  you  suppose  that  any  sort  of  God  would  rather  have 
my  honest  doubt  than  my  unthinking  or  calculating  or  hypo 
critical  submission  ?  I  can't  fool  myself,  and  you  want  me 
to  try  and  fool  God  !  The  thing  you  ask  me  to  worship  is 
only  superior  to  myself  by  its  monstrous  power;  and  I  think 
it  uses  its  power  very  ill.  I  refuse  to  believe  that  any  crea 
ture  so  dull  and  despotic  has  the  disposal  of  me.  I'd  rather 
blunder  along  my  own  way — I'd  rather  a  hundred  times 
be  lost  and  damned  forever  than  save  myself  by  a  lie  - 
and  then  father  turned  me  out  of  doors.  And  the  worst  of 
it  is,  Nathan,  the  worst  of  it  is  -  "  Jim  would  say,  turning 
his  haggard  young  face  upon  his  companion  in  a  sad  per 
plexity,  "that  I  know  the  poor  old  man  sorrows  in  his  heart 
over  me.  He  wrestles  with  the  Lord  in  prayer  —  yes,  sir, 
he  gets  down  on  his  poor  stiff  old  knees  every  night,  and 
beseeches  the  gory  dummy  he  believes  in  to  be  merciful  to 
his  erring  son.  I  —  I  don't  have  a  very  good  time  in  my  sin, 
Nat;  at  least  people  might  do  me  the  justice  to  acknowledge 
that  I'm  not  going  to  perdition  for  sheer  enjoyment  of  wick 
edness.  You  and  Jack  Vardaman  are  the  only  friends  I've 
got  —  and  the  barkeeper  at  the  Erin-go-Bragh.  I  suppose 
there's  not  a  crime  in  the  calendar  of  which  I  haven't  been 
accused  —  or  considered  capable.  There's  not  a  woman  in 
town  who'll  speak  to  me,  except  Mrs.  William  Ducey,  she's 
not  afraid.  She's  a  good,  sweet  woman  if  she  has  got  that 


A   LITTLE   MORE   ANCIENT   HISTORY        195 

nincompoop  of  a  boy.  That  dear  little  thing,  that  little 
Blake  girl,  she's  too  young,  I  dare  say,  to  understand  what 
an  unspeakable,  free-thinking  blackguard  I  am  —  she  let 
me  walk  alongside  of  her  on  the  street  the  other  day.  I  felt 
as  if  I  ought  in  conscience  to  warn  her.  I  have  to  avoid  my 
own  mother  and  sister  for  fear  of  getting  'em  in  trouble  with 
father.  No,  my  worst  enemy  wouldn't  call  it  a  path  of  roses 
—  but  I've  got  to  walk  it,  I've  got  to  walk  it  to  the  end." 
Jim  used  to  deliver  this  and  like  speeches  with  vast  energy, 
striding  about  their  little  room,  the  color  splotching  his  gaunt 
cheeks,  his  deep-set  eyes  burning  with  a  conviction  as  firmly 
rooted  and  fanatical  in  its  way  as  his  father's,  whom  he 
oddly  resembled  at  these  moments.  Years  afterward 
Burke  read  those  strong  and  sincere  words  in  which  another 
and  surely  a  kindred  spirit  declared:  "  .  .  .  had  I  lived  a 
couple  of  centuries  earlier  I  could  have  fancied  a  devil  scoff 
ing  at  me  .  .  .  and  asking  me  what  profit  it  was  to  have 
stripped  myself  of  the  hopes  and  consolations  of  the  mass  of 
mankind  ?  To  which  my  only  reply  was  and  is  —  oh,  devil, 
truth  is  better  than  much  profit."  And  reading,  perhaps 
understood  Sharpless's  attitude  a  little  more  clearly.  Cer 
tainly  Nat  liked  and  respected  him  from  the  first,  spite  of 
the  hard  names  and  harder  treatment  so  liberally  bestowed 
on  him.  They  lodged  together  now,  but  at  the  time  of  their 
first  formal  meeting  in  Vardaman's  office,  Jim  was  sleeping 
in  an  attic-room  somewhere  down  on  Front  Street,  and  eat 
ing  everywhere  and  anywhere.  From  the  day  of  his  eviction 
he  never  entered  his  father's  house,  nor  asked  the  Reverend 
Mr.  Sharpless  for  a  penny.  How  he  lived  nobody  knew, 
but  that  it  was  not  in  ease  or  luxury  was  abundantly  evident 
from  poor  Jim's  shabby  and  slip-shod  appearance.  "Low 
kind  of  a  hang-dog  look  the  fellah  has,"  George  Ducey  ob 
served;  "evah  see  such  a  waistcoat?  And  his  hat  — 
b'George,  no  gentleman  would  be  seen  in  such  a  hat ! "  Jim, 
however,  had  work,  —  writing  of  some  kind,  —  hard  work 
and  underpaid,  from  the  newspapers.  He  used  to  be  up  at 
all  hours  of  the  night,  he  prowled  about  all  quarters  of  the 
town,  he  knew  countless  queer  outlandish  characters.  I 
think  he  had  more  friends  than  he  suspected;  he  was  in 
domitably  gay  in  his  ragged  coat,  —  hopeful,  humorous,  and 
gallant-tempered.  His  manners  were  not  at  all  like  George 


196  NATHAN    BURKE 

Ducey's,  yet  Burke  thought  they  were  the  best  manners  in 
the  world,  and  to  see  Jim  help  an  old  market-woman  with  her 
basket  across  the  muddy  street  was  a  lesson  in  unofficious 
courtesy.  That  lean  purse  of  his  was  at  anybody's  service, 
for  he  certainly  took  110  thought  for  the  morrow;  but  it  seemed 
to  Nathan  as  if  his  friend  invested  this  hand-to-mouth  exist 
ence  with  a  kind  of  lovable  dignity,  spreading  his  sail  to  the 
winds  of  Bohemia  with  an  admirable  courage  and  careless 
ness.  John  Vardaman,  who  was  fond  of  him,  once  told 
Burke  that  he  had  offered  his  own  home  to  Jim,  even  pressed 
it  on  him,  but  the  young  man  refused.  "  There's  your  sister 
—  and  it  might  ruin  your  practice,  Jack,"  he  said.  And 
the  doctor  was  forced  to  admit  that  there  was  that  dan 
ger.  "People  were  so  prejudiced  in  those  days,  you  re 
member,  Burke,"  said  he;  " maybe  Jim  was  right,  but 
anyhow,  I  couldn't  persuade  him  into  it."  So  Jim  held  on 
his  way,  busy  with  his  everlasting  note-book  in  the  legisla 
tive  chambers,  the  county-offices,  and  police  tribunals  of 
the  Court-house,  haunting  the  taverns,  coffee-houses, 
market-stands,  pawnshops,  hail-fellow-well-met  with  stage- 
drivers,  actors,  pedlers,  drovers,  twopenny  politicians,  the 
rout  of  vagabonds  with  which  our  little  capital  city  was 
always  so  well  supplied.  It  was  no  wonder  that  with  his 
woful  linen,  his  all  but  empty  pockets,  his  garret,  and  his 
motley  associates  Jim  should  have  seemed  to  his  father's 
world  in  full  career  upon  the  downward  path.  How  could 
a  man  of  such  doubtful  habits  (to  say  nothing  of  his  known 
opinions)  have  any  but  doubtful  morals  ?  People  even  dis 
cerned  something  incongruous  in  the  companionship  of 
Jim  Sharpless  and  that  model  character,  Mr.  Nathan 
Burke. 

" Where  on  earth  did  you  two  first  meet?"  Vardaman 
had  asked  [us.  And  Sharpless,  with  a  sonorous  gravity, 
informed  him,  quoting  from  a  flaming  letter  which  had  ap 
peared  in  a  recent  issue  of  the  Journal  that  he  was  "'prob 
ably  aware  that  notwithstanding  all  the  legislation  on  the 
subject  the  haunts  of  vice  in  our  city  are  in  as  active  opera 
tion  as  ever  .  .  .  and  it  has  become  fashionable  with  us  to 
frequent  those  SINKS  OF  INFAMY,  the  BILLIARD-ROOM 
and  the  CARD-ROOM,  which  are  bringing  —  '  Jim  went 
on  in  a  pulpit-like  intonation  of  horror  —  " 'which  are  bring- 


A  LITTLE  MORE   ANCIENT  HISTORY        197 

ing,  sir,  more  ruin  on  the  rising  generation  than  all  the 
vices  of  the  brothel  ever  could  — 

" That's  enough,"  said  the  doctor,  beginning  to  laugh; 
"I  read  that  letter.  But  at  what  particular  sink  of  infamy 
—  since  I  infer  that's  where  the  acquaintance  began  —  did 
you  —  ?" 

"The  Erin-go-Bragh,"  Burke  told  him.  And  added, 
1  'The  notorious  villain,  its  proprietor,  is  a  very  temperate, 
decent  sort  of  man,  by  the  way." 

"And  the  barkeeper  is  my  very  good  friend,"  said  Sharp- 
less;  "I  lodged  in  the  same  house  and  he  has  two  little  boys 
that  I  used  to  play  with  and  tell  stories  to.  And  at  Christ 
mas  he  invited  me  downstairs  to  celebrate  with  a  dish  of 
tripe  and  onions  which  Mrs.  Barkeeper  cooked  —  and  cooked 
handsomely,  too,  without  sparing  the  lard;  it  was  the  glory 
that  was  grease.  Sir,  it  cheered  the  outcast's  heart  —  not 
to  mention  his  digestive  organs,  which  would  be  indelicate." 

Jim's  garret  days  were  over  now  —  forever  over,  he  used 
to  say  with  a  mock-sentimental  sigh,  and  spout,  "  Je  viens 
revoir  Vasile  de  majeunesse,"  with  a  pretence  of  doddering  old 
age  which  was  infinitely  diverting  —  since  Burke  had  pre 
vailed  on  him  to  share  a  back  room  at  Mrs.  Slaney's  with  him, 
which  came  to  pass  early  in  their  acquaintance.  Mrs.  Sla- 
ney,  whom  his  dire  reputation  had  not  yet  reached,  thought 
Mr.  Sharpless  just  a  lovely  young  man  —  but,  there,  any 
friend  of  yours,  Mr.  Burke  — !  In  a  little  while  Jim  was  as 
familiar  with  Slaney's  disastrous  career,  the  daguerreotype, 
and  the  votive  altar  of  immortelles  as  Burke  himself,  and 
the  widow  found  him  quite  as  sympathetic.  The  young 
fellows  considered  themselves  very  lucky  in  their  snuggery 
with  the  smell  of  dinner  reeking  up  the  back  stairs.  Their 
combined  resources  furnished  them  with  a  somewhat  larger 
—  in  fact  an  entirely  adequate !  —  supply  of  coal  and  kind 
lings  which  they  kept  handily  in  a  barrel  (sawed  down  to  a 
convenient  height,  and  nicely  braced  or  bound  around  the 
edge);  they  had  two  little  Napoleonic  iron  camp-beds  and 
a  table  and  two  chairs  picked  up  for  a  song  from  some  second 
hand  dealer.  There  was  a  chest  of  drawers,  and  a  small 
shaving-glass  of  a  rather  fearsome  greenish  hue  atop  of  it. 
Nat's  books  were  marshalled  on  a  shelf,  beneath  which  one 
might  discover,  chastely  concealed  behind  a  red  calico  cur- 


198  NATHAN    BURKE 

tain,  the  wearing  apparel  of  these  hermits  pendent  from  a 
few  —  a  very  few  —  pegs,  and  their  boots  ranked  upon  the 
floor.  The  apartment  was  a  "  bower  of  innocence  and 
beauty,"  Jim  asserted  to  Vardaman,  when  the  latter  came  to 
visit  them.  Neither  of  them  could  afford  cigars,  so  an 
assortment  of  pipes  graced  the  high,  wooden  mantle-shelf. 
Over  it  they  hung  up  Nathan's  faithful  old  musket  with  the 
arms  of  Great  Britain  and  Georgius  Rex  engraved  on  its 
stock.  "I  used  to  think  that  was  the  name  of  the  fellow 
that  had  owned  it,"  said  Burke,  with  a  laugh,  telling  his 
friend  about  Darnell  and  his  old  camp-fire  days.  In  the 
middle  of  the  chimney-breast  Sharpless  set  up  his  most 
valued  —  to  be  frank,  it  was  almost  his  only  —  possession, 
a  drawing  of  his  mother  and  Mary,  taken  together  when  the 
little  girl  was  perhaps  eight  or  nine.  Mrs.  Sharpless  was 
posed  in  a  short-waisted  dress,  with  her  pretty  black  hair 
gathered  in  a  ribbon  on  top  of  her  head;  Mary  at  her  knee 
had  a  hoop  and  stick,  and  embroidered  pantalettes  and 
spiral  curls;  the  faces  and  hands  were  tinted,  and  all  the 
rest  done  in  lead-pencil,  every  hair  in  every  curl  touched  in 
painstakingly. 

"It's  not  mine  really  —  I  thieved  it  out  of  my  room  when 
I  came  away  from  the  house,"  said  Jim,  remarking  the  inter 
est  with  which  his  friend  surveyed  this  work  of  art.  "You 
don't  mind  its  being  there,  do  you?"  On  the  contrary, 
Nat  liked  it  exceedingly;  perhaps  he  even  took  advantage 
of  it  to  invite  Jim  to  further  confidences  concerning  his  mother 
and  sister.  Was  it  a  good  likeness  of  them  both  ?  Did 
—  ahem  —  did  Jim's  sister,  for  instance,  look  at  all  like  that, 
now? 

"Why,  you've  seen  Mary,  haven't  you?"  Sharpless  asked 
in  surprise;  "she  plays  the  accompaniments  at  all  the  con 
certs,  and  lots  of  other  places,  too.  You  must  have  seen  her 
-  kind  of  a  slim  girl  with  dead  loads  of  black  hair  done  up 
in  that  sort  of  basket-work  way  the  girls  do  their  hair,  with 
flowers  in  it,  you  know.  The  picture  looks  like  her  still. 
She  isn't  exactly  pretty  —  she  can't  hold  a  candle  to  Mother, 
but  she  —  well,  everybody  always  turns  around  to  look  at 
Mary,  I  don't  know  why,"  said  Jim,  knitting  his  brows  over 
this  phenomenon. 

Nathan,  reddening  a  little  consciously,  believed  that  he 


A   LITTLE   MORE   ANCIENT   HISTORY        199 

could  have  told  why.  He  felt  a  sort  of  shame  at  this 
pumping  of  his  friend,  yet,  in  the  name  of  sense,  why  not  ? 
Why  not,  I  say,  ask  as  many  questions  —  civil,  proper  ques 
tions  —  as  he  chose  about  Miss  Mary  Sharpless  ?  She  was 
a  very  interesting-looking  girl,  and  —  and  —  and  Mr.  Nat 
would  have  gone  to  jail  sooner  than  admit  to  any  one,  even 
to  Jim,  that  he  had  ever  given  her  a  thought! 

" Mary's  old  —  about  thirty,  I  guess,"  said  the  brother, 
ruthlessly;  "  she  doesn't  look  it,  though.  Mother  doesn't 
look  her  age,  either.  It's  queer,  because  they've  both  had 
rather  a  hard  time,  in  a  kind  of  woman's  way,  I  mean,  you 
know.  Making  their  own  clothes,  and  father's  shirts,  and 
mine,  and  cobbling  things  around  the  house,  and  taking 
hold  in  the  kitchen  when  we  haven't  any  servant,  and  giving 
music-lessons,  and  —  and  all  things  like  that.  It's  hard  on 
a  woman,  must  be,  I  think,  to  have  to  be  planning  and 
worrying  how  to  make  the  money  last  out,  the  whole  time. 
Mother's  wonderful  that  way  —  aren't  you,  Ma?"  he  said, 
addressing  the  smiling  young  woman  in  the  picture  affec 
tionately;  "  never  you  mind  —  some  day  I'm  going  to  get 
you  everything  you  want,  and  you  shan't  have  to  lift  a 
finger.  Mary's  not  so  good  at  it,  but  then  she  —  well, 
Mary's  kind  of  off  to  herself,  somehow  —  sui  generis,  as  Jack 
would  say." 

"How  'off  to  herself?"  Nat  demanded. 

"Well,  just  separate,  you  know,  that's  all.  I  mean  it's 
not  very  easy  to  get  at  Mary,  somehow.  She's  always  on 
the  side  of  the  person  she's  with  at  the  time;  she  wouldn't 
think  it  good  manners  to  disagree.  But  anyhow,  Mary's 
very  sweet-tempered;  she  —  oh,  well,  she  knows  which  side 
her  bread's  buttered  on,  and  that's  the  truth.  I've  heard 
her  telling  people  that  their  little  girl  was  a  darling  little 
angel  and  had  a  perfectly  wonderful  talent  for  music,  when 
she  knew  and  I  knew  and  anybody  that  had  any  sense  would 
know  that  the  youngster  couldn't  tell  '  Yankee  Doodle  '  from 
*  Old  Hundred ' !  Mary  calls  it  tact ;  /  call  it  —  never  mind 
what!"  He  wagged  his  hand.  "You  pays  your  money 
and  you  takes  your  choice,"  he  said  with  a  laugh. 

"Oh,  well,  a  woman,  you  know — " 

Jim,  who  was  cleaning  a  pipe,  looked  up  from  the  wire 
he  was  drawing  through  its  stem,  under  his  brows,  at  his 


200  NATHAN   BURKE 

friend  and  grinned  again.  "Oh,  well,  a  woman!"  he  mim 
icked.  "That's  just  your  typical  attitude,  Nat.  You're 
just  the  kind  any  woman  could  wrap  around  her  little  fin 
ger  if  she  was  smart  enough.  She's  a  woman  —  so  she 
doesn't  have  to  tell  the  truth,  or  act  like  a  reasoning  human 
being,  or  be  anything  but  a  divine  creature  on  a  pedestal. 
You  want  to  lie  down  and  let  'em  walk  over  you.  Why, 
by  your  own  say-so,  you've  stood  more  bullying  and  be 
devilling  from  Mrs.  Ducey  than  you'd  ever  have  dreamed 
of  taking  from  a  man.  You're  afraid  of  raising  your  voice 
for  fear  of  offending  their  dear  little  ears,  or  of  touching  'em 
for  fear  of  hurting  their  dear  little  bodies,  or  of  looking  at 
'em  for  fear  of  frightening  their  dear  little  — 

"You  shut  up!"  shouted  Nathan,  indignant  yet  laughing ; 
"I'm  not  quite  such  a  sawney  as  all  that !" 

"Sawney?  Why,  not  at  all  —  anything  but !"  James 
blew  out  his  pipe-stem  and  tilted  back  in  his  chair,  roaring 
out  the  fag-end  of  a  ditty  with  which  he  used  to  enliven  the 
Slaney  precincts:  — 

" '  For  his  spirit  it  was  tre-men-ju-ous,  and  fierce  to  be-HOLD  ! 
In  a  young  man  bred  a  carpenter  only  nineteen  years  old ! ' 

What  I  admire  about  that  song  is  its  power  of  vivid  char 
acterization,"  he  said  seriously;  "and  it  is  ^curiously  appli 
cable  to  either  one  of  us  — 

'  For  his  spirit  it  was  tre-men-ju-ous — '  " 

"If  you  don't  look  out,  you'll  have  the  legs  off  that  chair," 
Nathan  warned  him  anxiously. 

"That's  the  kind  of  thing  Mother's  all  the  time  trying 
to  fix,"  said  Jim,  arresting  himself  in  the  full  tide  of  melody 
and  getting  up  to  examine  the  chair.  "I  used  to  stop  her 
hammering  her  poor  little  thumbs  black  and  blue  when  I 
was  at  home.  There's  a  woman  you  can  put  on  a  pedestal 
as  high  as  you  want,  Nat,"  added  the  young  man,  soberly; 
"and  my  sister's  a  mighty  nice  sort  of  girl,  too,  if  she  is  my 
sister,"  he  went  on  quickly;  "and  if  she  does  tell  her  funny 
little  woman-fibs.  It's  just  as  you  say,  after  all,  that  sort 
of  thing  doesn't  count  with  women;  they're  brought  up  to 
it,  more  or  less.  I  —  I  don't  want  you  to  think  I'd  run  down 


A   LITTLE  MORE   ANCIENT   HISTORY        201 

my  own  sister,  Nat.  She's  had  a  lot  to  stand  on  my  account. 
It's  a  drawback  to  any  girl  to  have  a  man  for  a  brother  that 
everybody  calls  a  worthless  coot.  And  Mary's  so  attractive 
too.  She's  been  engaged  lots  of  times." 

"Has  she  ?  "  said  Nathan,  consumed  by  a  dismal  curiosity. 
"Is  —  is  she  engaged  now?" 

"  Why,  not  that  I  know  of  —  but  then  I  mightn't  hear, 
anyhow.  I  can't  go  to  see  her,  you  know.  But  there  used 
to  be  somebody  spooning  around  and  holding  hands  with 
Mary  all  the  time.  I  was  forever  getting  in  the  way  and 
being  shunted  off.  Yes,  I'm  afraid  Mary's  something  of 
a  flirt;  she's  mowed  'em  down  in  her  time,  I  guess.  And  it's 
a  little  strange  when  you  think,  as  I  say,  that  she's  not  quite 
pretty,  only  out-of-the-way  looking,"  concluded  Jim,  medi 
tatively. 

Welladay,  it  was  not  so  very  strange  to  Nat's  way  of 
thinking!  And  I  suppose  if  he  had  had  it  on  the  most  cred 
itable  authority  that  Miss  Sharpless  was  old  enough  to  be  his 
mother,  that  she  wore  false  teeth,  false  hair,  and  a  wooden 
leg,  and  had  married  and  divorced  half  a  dozen  husbands,  he 
would  still  have  continued  in  his  timid  and  distant  worship. 
The  young  man  would  not  acknowledge  it  to  himself,  for 
he  would  have  been  obliged  to  own  his  fancy  both  pitiful  and 
absurd.  He  refrained  from  analyzing  the  feeling  that  led  him 
out  of  his  road  to  walk  past  the  Sharpless  house,  to  go  and 
sit  in  a  stiff  pew  at  the  back  of  the  church  and  listen  by  the  hour 
to  a  dreary  exposition  of  the  here  and  the  hereafter,  to  direct 
Jim's  talk  upon  his  sister  by  endless  ridiculous  stratagems. 
And  what  was  he  to  Hecuba  ?  She  hardly  knew  that  he 
existed;  she  had  merely  spoken  to  him  once  in  the  angelic 
kindness  of  her  heart,  while  he  —  of  all  things  in  the  world  ! 
—  was  cutting  Mrs.  William  Ducey's  grass.  He  was  not 
much  advanced  now  upon  that  ignominious  labor  —  a  raw 
youth  keeping  books  for  Mr.  Marsh  all  day,  and  befogging 
himself  over  "Chitty  on  Contracts"  all  night!  Lord,  what 
fools  these  mortals  be!  For  mercy's  sake,  Nathan,  knock 
out  your  pipe  and  go  to  bed  ! 


CHAPTER  XV 
WHICH  is  SHORT  AND  RATHER  SERIOUS 

THE  two  friends  used  to  see  a  good  deal  of  Dr.  John 
Vardaman  these  days,  either  in  his  State  Street  eyrie,  when 
they  dropped  in  of  an  evening,  or  in  their  own  quarters  at 
Mrs.  Slaney's,  when  the  doctor  came  to  see  them  in  an  off 
hour.  He  made  his  home  with  an  elderly,  unmarried  sister, 
so  Burke  understood,  in  a  house,  some  way  out  on  Town 
Street;  their  father  had  been  an  English  gentleman  of  birth 
and  means,  at  one  time  an  officer  of  Pakenham's,  who  had 
settled  in  this  country  after  the  late  war,  and  died  about 
1830,  I  believe.  All  this  Sharpless  told  Nathan,  for  Varda 
man  himself  never  mentioned  his  family  except  in  the  most 
matter-of-fact  fashion  or  hinted  at  his  fine  old  descent,  of 
which,  as  the  world  goes,  it  would  have  been  natural  enough 
for  him  to  be  quite  proud.  He  was  very  tall,  with  that 
kind  of  commanding  homeliness  which  is  sometimes  better 
than  good  looks,  prematurely  graying  hair,  and  —  Burke 
used  to  think  —  the  most  pleasant  speaking-voice  and  enun 
ciation  ever  heard,  though  he  could  not  sing  a  note.  To 
hear  Jack  read  was  a  real  treat;  he  did  it  without  any  sort 
of  dramatic  affectations,  yet  with  a  perfect  mastery  of  ex 
pression  and  an  absolute  understanding  of  the  author. 
For  the  rest,  he  was  an  ironical,  rather  quiet  fellow,  given 
to  moods  of  prodigious  cynicism  and  melancholy,  as  young 
men  sometimes  are,  when  he  would  offer  many  stinging 
criticisms  of  society,  politics,  the  other  sex,  and  the  world  at 
large,  being  all  the  while  the  most  tolerant  and  tender 
hearted  of  men.  He  was  some  years  older  than  either  of  the 
others,  and  had  had  a  much  wider  experience  of  life,  having 
studied  his  profession  in  eastern  cities,  and  walked  the 
hospitals  of  Edinburgh  and  Leipzig.  People  used  to  wonder 
that  John  Vardaman,  whose  father  had  left  him  plenty  of 
money  to  live  comfortably  without  doing  a  stroke  of  work, 
should  yet  have  voluntarily  and  in  fact  most  eagerly  elected 

202 


WHICH   IS   SHORT   AND   RATHER   SERIOUS     203 

to  follow  one  of  the  hardest  of  professions.  It  was  a  point 
of  view  with  which  Burke,  for  one,  was  never  in  sympathy. 
Surely  to  do  some  one  thing  well  is  the  highest  pleasure  a 
man  can  have,  and  the  work  we  love  is  the  only  play.  Nat, 
to  whom  the  sight  of  suffering,  whether  of  man  or  beast,  was 
intolerable,  who  would  sooner  have  dug  ditches  or  carried 
a  hod  than  been  a  doctor,  always  felt  an  unmeasured  respect 
for  this  greatest  and  most  beautiful  of  vocations.  Mr. 
Burke  never  had  the  ill-luck  to  meet  a  physician  whom  he 
could  not  like,  beginning  with  John,  who  was  a  born  doctor, 
I  think.  He  was  very  successful  and  might  have  made  a 
huge  income  for  those  days,  if  he  had  not  —  we  suspected 
—  done  so  much  in  charity.  Somebody  told  him  one  day 
in  Burke's  presence  that  all  he  needed  to  make  him  perfect 
was  a  wife  —  "  Every  young  physician  ought  to  marry  as  a 
stroke  of  business.  A  wife  and  one  or  two  babies,  Varda- 
man  —  why,  it's  money  in  a  doctor's  pocket — "said  this 
well-meaning  person.  It  was  a  piece  of  jocularity  which 
Vardaman,  contrary  to  his  custom,  received  with  a  very 
grum  countenance  and  the  brief  answer  which  turneth 
away  fun,  so  that  Burke  was  struck  and  interested  and  in 
quired  privately  of  Sharpless  afterwards  what  was  amiss  ? 

"Well,  I  guess  that  sort  of  talk  cuts  a  little  too  near  the 
bone  with  Jack,"  said  the  latter,  in  a  vague  metaphor;  and  al 
though  Jim,  in  his  exile,  still  preserved  a  sort  of  underground 
communication  with  Society,  and  may  very  well  have  heard 
all  about  the  doctor's  infelicities,  he  would  say  no  more,  not 
being  inclined  to  gossip,  nor  did  Burke  press  him,  for 
that  matter. 

It  was  from  Dr.  Vardaman  that  they  heard  some  time 
in  the  fall  of  Mrs.  Ducey's  illness;  there  was  an  influenza 
going  about,  of  wrhich  both  Burke  and  Sharpless  were  obliged 
to  take  their  share,  the  latter's  cough  attacking  him  so  fiercely 
and  hanging  on  so  long  (for  Jim  was  thin,  underfed,  and  not 
of  a  strong  build)  as  to  give  his  friend  some  anxiety.  The 
doctor  came  and  dosed  them  with  the  stalwart  remedies  of 
the  day;  he  described  with  a  good  deal  of  humor  the  disas 
trous  experiments  of  some  of  his  patients  with  New  London 
Liver  Pills,  Salter's  Ginseng  Panacea  —  Lord  knows  what 
quack  nostrums.  People  had  a  kind  of  mania  for  trying 
these  swindling  mixtures;  the  newspapers  always  exhibited 


204  NATHAN    BURKE 

three  or  four  solid  pages  of  their  advertisements.  Mrs. 
Ducey  was  one  of  the  victims.  "She  was  a  pretty  sick 
woman  by  the  time  I  got  there,"  said  the  doctor,  seriously. 
"  Little  Francie  Blake  was  in  attendance,  and  a  remarkable- 
looking  girl  —  remarkably  handsome,  I  mean,  in  a  calico  gown 
and  a  cap  over  her  black  hair  —  a  trying  sort  of  costume, 
but  she  looked  well  in  it.  She  must  be  a  relative  —  who 
do  you  suppose  it  is,  Jim  ?  I  thought  I  knew  all  of  them  — 
but  those  southern  kinships!  There's  somebody  new  turn 
ing  up  all  the  time;  Aunt  Coralie's  third  son's  step-daughter, 
who  hasn't  got  anywhere  to  live,  poor  child,  now  that  Sec 
ond-Cousin  Oliver  Randolph  is  dead,  and  so  has  to  come  up 
North  and  make  her  home  with  Fortieth-Cousin  Anne 
Ducey!  That's  the  way  it  goes  —  God  bless  'em  all ! "  said 
John,  with  some  feeling.  "This  young  woman  had  rather 
a  southern  look  —  or  call  it  Oriental  —  gypsy  —  anything 
you  choose  that's  alien  and  picturesque.  She  — 

"I  know  her.  Her  name's  Darnell  —  don't  you  remem 
ber?"  interrupted  Nat,  coloring  a  little  with  the  guilty 
thought  that  he  ought  to  know  more  about  Nance.  He 
told  the  doctor  her  story.  "Did  —  did  she  seem  contented 
—  and  —  and  happy,  Jack?"  he  asked  in  a  strange  appre 
hension.  He  promised  himself,  for  the  twentieth  time,  to 
go  and  see  her. 

"Contented  and  happy  ?"  said  Vardaman,  with  a  puzzled 
look;  "why,  I  never  noticed.  How  could  I  tell,  anyhow? 
I  should  think  she  would  be  in  such  a  good  home.  She 
makes  a  fine  nurse,  very  deft,  lightfooted,  and  intelligent. 
And  patient,  I  could  see  that.  Between  ourselves  it's  not 
an  easy  business,  nursing;  people  are  so  apt  to  be  fretful  and 
imperious.  But  this  girl  —  what  did  you  say  her  name  was 
—  Nance?  —  struck  me  as  most  devoted.  She  waited  on 
me  and  watched  Mrs.  Ducey  like  a  cat.  She's  rather  curious, 
rather  interesting,  Nathan  —  I'm  glad  you  told  me  about 
her.  Beautiful  woman,  isn't  she?  And  she  looked  very 
lovely  and  tender  with  Mrs.  Ducey  - 

"I'm  sure  little  Miss  Blake  would  be  that  too,  she  —  she's 
that  kind  of  girl,  I  know,"  said  Sharpless,  abruptly  and  some 
what  heatedly,  so  that  Burke  looked  at  him,  taken  by  sur 
prise. 

"Eh?     Francie?     Oh,  yes,  Francie's  a  nice  child.     But  I 


WHICH   IS   SHORT   AND   RATHER  SERIOUS     205 

was  going  to  tell  you  the  first  thing  I  saw  was  your  old  ac 
quaintance,  Nat,  Vaughn's  Vegetable  Lithontriptic  Mix 
ture,  a  giant  bottle  of  that  elixir  of  life  on  the  dressing-table ! 
It's  enough  to  try  the  patience  of  Job,"  declared  the  doctor, 
vigorously;  " people  —  intelligent,  educated  people  that 
ought  to  know  better  —  catch  a  cold  —  cough  a  little  — • 
fever  —  chills  —  sore  throat  —  no  appetite,  and  all  the  rest 
of  it,  and  instead  of  going  to  bed  sensibly  and  sending  for  the 
doctor,  they  fribble  around  with  these  vile  stuffs  that  would 
ruin  the  constitution  of  a  hippopotamus.  They  spend  ten 
times  the  money  and  —  "he  interrupted  himself  with  a 
grin  —  "run  actually  ten  times  the  risk  they  would  even  if 
they  had  the  most  inexperienced  and  least  capable  of  doc 
tors - 

"To  say  nothing  of  that  sound  medical  authority,  John 
Vardaman,  M.D.,"  said  Jim.  "Pooh  —  you're  jealous!" 

"  Mr.  Sharpless,"  said  Vardaman,  ponderously,  "  you  will 
retract  that  statement,  or  I'll  poultice  you  within  an  inch  of 
your  life.  I'll  mustard-plaster  you,  sir,  into  a  belief  in  that 
warm  place  which  you  insist  don't  exist  —  " 

"It  would  be  taking  a  great  deal  of  mustard  to  a  very  little 
meat,  I  think,"  said  Jim,  glancing  down  over  his  lean  anat 
omy;  "but  who  said  I  was  going  to  employ  you?  No,  sir, 
I'll  take  —  '  he  snatched  up  the  paper  from  the  table  and 
read,  "I'll  take  the  Ginseng  Panacea,  'which  cured  Mr. 
Jukes  of  Licking  Summit  and  five  members  of  his  family  of 
a  cough,  two  of  them  of  long  standing.  Mr.  Jukes  also  had 
an  aggravated  case  of  dropsy.  Eight  bottles  made  him  a  well 
man !  He  is  now  a  robust  farmer ! '  It  doesn't  say  what 
he  was  before  the  eight  bottles." 

"A  chicken-thief,  probably,"  said  the  doctor.  tlt Bless 
thee,  Bottom,  thou  art  translated!'  Your  miserable  jour 
nals  are  responsible  for  spreading  these  lies,  Jim.  I  wonder 
you  have  the  face  to  write  for  them." 

"By  heavens,  I  wouldn't  have  any  face  at  all  if  I  didn't 
write  for  them,"  said  Jim,  and  laughed  and  set  himself 
coughing  desperately;  "I've  got  to  keep  body  and  soul  to 
gether  somehow,"  he  gasped  out  when  the  fit  was  over. 
"Never  mind,  Jack,  I'll  show  you  what  I  can  do  in  the  cause 
of  righteousness."  And  he  forthwith  sat  down  and  wrote 
the  editor  of  the  Journal  in  the  character  of  a  subscriber, 


206  NATHAN   BURKE 

extolling  the  virtues  of  Ramrod's  Elixir  of  Gridiron,  which 
had  cured  its  tens  of  thousands  of  every  known  disease,  being 
a  medicine  borrowed  by  the  pioneers  from  the  Indian  squaws 
who  made  a  decoction  by  boiling 'their  husband's  rifle-bar 
rels,  etc.  It  appeared  within  a  day  or  two  and  made  every 
body  laugh;  but  Vardaman,  meeting  Nathan  on  the  street, 
took  him  aside  with  a  grave  face  and  urged  him  to  have  an 
eye  on  Jim.  "I  suppose  you're  the  only  person  on  earth 
who  can  do  anything  with  him  or  for  him,  Burke,"  said  the 
doctor,  visibly  worried;  "his  father,  you  know  —  I  —  I 
don't  know  what  to  do  about  the  business.  He's  really  very 
sick.  That  spirit  of  his  keeps  him  up  and  going  around; 
he'll  go  till  he  drops.  He  will  work  when  Lord  knows  you 
or  I  or  anybody  that  knows  him  at  all  would  lend  him  money 
or  do  anything  for  him.  Make  him  stay  in  the  house  — 
keep  him  out  of  the  weather  if  you  can  —  at  night,  you 
know  —  all  the  time  for  that  matter.  He  ought  to  have 
good  strengthening  food,  and  hasn't  he  got  any  warmer 
clothes  ?  Damn  it,  why  will  people  mistreat  themselves 
this  way!"  said  John,  in  a  temper,  with  his  kind  concern. 
Burke  promised,  in  alarm;  indeed,  he  had  been  up  half  the 
night  before,  trying  to  help  his  friend,  in  a  clumsy  way, 
through  the  paroxysms  of  coughing.  Mrs.  Slaney  herself 
appeared  toward  the  small  hours,  feebly  tapping  at  their 
door,  with  a  candle  and  her  hair  in  curl-papers,  and  a  purple 
calico  double-gown  clutched  about  her  meagre  shoulders  — 
a  most  lugubrious  and  disheartening  figure.  "Oh,  my,  ain't 
it  awful  the  way  that  poor  young  man's  been  suffering?" 
she  sighed,  leaning  against  the  door-jamb,  as  Nathan 
shivered  before  her  in  his  night-shirt  and  pantaloons.  And 
this  being  apparently  all  she  had  to  offer  in  advice  or  assis 
tance,  Nat  finally  persuaded  her  to  go  away.  He  began  to 
understand  Slaney's  behavior. 

That  same  day,  a  raw  and  rainy  winter  day,  he  came  upon 
Jim  whom  he  had  solemnly  engaged  not  to  leave  the  house,  up 
and  out  in  his  thin  old  surtout,  with  his  sunken  cheeks  and 
fever-bright  eyes,  walking  along  by  Francie  '  Blake  of  all 
people  in  the  world,  carrying  some  bundle  of  hers  and  talking 
very  gayly.  Little  Francie's  face  flushed  all  over  as  she  saw 
Nat  coming  towards  them ;  she  stopped  short  in  an  odd  and 
sweet  confusion,  looking  from  one  young  man  to  the  other. 


WHICH   IS   SHORT   AND   RATHER  SERIOUS     207 

"We  were  talking  about  you,  sir,"  Sharpless  cried  out,  and 
Francie  blushed  rosier  than  ever.  Francie  was  always  a 
diffident  child,  and  although  she  was  now,  as  Nathan  noted 
with  a  start  of  surprise,  transformed  all  at  once  from  a  fat, 
stubby,  little  girl  into  a  tall,  rather  thick-waisted,  and  gang 
ling  young  woman,  —  maid  —  miss,  whatever  may  be  the 
proper  term  for  females  at  this  awkward  age,  —  he  still  could 
not  think  of  her  as  anything  but  a  child.  He  went  up  and 
took  the  bundle  away  from  Jim,  sternly  adjuring  him  to  go 
home;  Jim  surrendered  with  some  kind  of  laughing  protest, 
and  went  off  coughing.  He  wavered  in  his  walk,  he  trem 
bled  with  ague  from  head  to  foot;  Nathan  looked  after  him 
with  wretched  misgivings.  He  walked  along  gloomily  with 
Francie  the  familiar  way  to  the  Ducey  house.  Aunt  Anne 
was  very  sick,  the  child  told  him;  like  Mr.  Sharpless,  only 
she  didn't  think  Aunt  Anne's  cough  was  quite  so  bad.  She 
thought  Mr.  Sharpless  was  very  nice  —  why  did  people  say 
such  things  about  him  ?  Nathan  growled  a  savage  explana 
tion,  his  heart  full  of  pain  and  perplexity.  It  was  not 
until  they  reached  the  door  that  he  thought  of  Nance  Dar 
nell,  remembering  that  he  had  not  even  asked  about  her. 
Francie  said  that  Nance  was  well;  she  hadn't  had  the  influenza 
at  all;  she  was  lovely  to  Aunt  Anne,  taking  entire  charge  of 
her.  "She's  stronger  than  I  am  —  she  can  lift  Aunt  Anne 
right  up  and  turn  her  over,  you  know.  And  she's  just  as 
gentle  as  can  be,  too,"  said  the  girl,  looking  up  at  him,  with 
the  bundle  which  he  had  returned  to  her  arms  as  they  stood 
within  the  door,  with  her  great,  serious, child's  eyes.  "Don't 
you  want  to  see  Nance,  Nathan?" 

Nat  hadn't  time,  he  must  get  back  to  the  store  —  it 
seemed  as  if  he  never  did  have  time,  he  thought,  troubled. 
"Do  you  think  she's  happy  here,  Francie?  Does  she  get 
along  with  —  with  everybody?"  he  asked  her  earnestly. 

"Ye-yes  —  that  is—  '  she  looked  at  him  distressfully, 
her  loyal  little  heart  hesitating;  "of  course  it  was  a  little 
hard  for  her  at  first.  There  were  so  many  things  for  her  to 
learn  and  Aunt  Anne  —  Aunt  Anne  didn't  quite  understand 
-  but  she's  been  here  over  six  months  now,  you  know,  and 
she's  learned  ever  so  much.  She  says  herself  she  knows  a 
great  deal  more  than  when  she  came.  I've  shown  her  some 
things  —  she  said  she  liked  me  to,"  said  Francie,  shyly. 


208  NATHAN   BURKE 

Nathan  thanked  her  from  his  heart;  he  felt  a  momentary 
impulse  —  which  he  fortunately  controlled,  remembering 
her  lengthening  skirts  —  to  pick  Francie  up  and  hug  her. 
There  was  something  inexpressibly  wholesome  and  comfort 
able  about  this  little  girl  —  for  so  she  appeared  to  him,  in 
spite  of  her  grown-up  costume  which  Mrs.  Ducey^had  had 
crinolined  in  the  extreme  of  the  fashion,  her  bonnet  with 
artificial  flowers  like  a  young  lady's,  her  brown  alpaca 
pelisse  ornamented  with  those  remarkable  flutings  and 
quillings  with  which  women  decked  themselves  in  those 
days.  Her  thick  hair  was  smoothly  braided  up  like  Miss 
Sharpless's;  she  wore  a  white  collar  and  a  round  brooch  of 
black  enamel  rimmed  with  pearls,  wherein  some  of  the 
family  hair  was  enshrined  after  the  pious  taste  of  the  times. 
Nathan  observed  these  signs  of  maturity  almost  mechanically 
yet  came  away  relieved  by  the  knowledge  that  Francie  had 
reached  an  age  when  she  must  count  for  something  in  the 
household  —  even  in  a  household  so  despotically  ridden  as 
Mrs.  Ducey's;  and  that  Nance  had  her  sympathy  and  un 
derstanding.  More  than  ever  he  felt  a  man's  helpless 
ness  before  this  problem;  the  thing  that  looked  so  simple  to 
the  casual  view  was  to  him  infinitely  intricate.  Here  was 
an  untrained,  ignorant,  high-spirited  girl  taken  into  a  good 
home,  fed,  clothed,  educated,  helped,  and  sheltered  in  every 
way  —  what  more  could  anybody  ask  ?  On  the  face  of  it, 
Nance  was  unusually  lucky,  the  Duceys  unusually  kind. 
Yet  when  he  thought  of  Nance  at  all  —  which,  I  am  afraid, 
had  not  been  often  —  some  instinct  shouted  in  his  inner 'ear 
that  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  be  contented  or  satisfied  — 
farcically  and  unhappily  impossible.  George's  lively  anec 
dotes,  Francie's  own  reluctant  and  dubious  face,  let  in  a  dis 
quieting  illumination.  But  then,  why  did  she  stay?  He 
must  see  her,  talk  to  her,  find  out  for  himself.  Darnell's 
memory  reproached  him. 

Alas  for  these  good  resolutions  !  There  is  a  bitter  truth 
in  that  hard  old  saying  that  he  that  will  not  when  he  may, 
he  cannot  when  he  would.  Even  had  Nathan  kept  his 
promises  to  himself,  I  do  not  know  that  he  would  have  ac 
complished  much  with  his  reasoning  and  his  sermonizing  and 
his  self-important  kindness  —  but  that  does  not  excuse  him 
in  his  own  eyes.  One  might  fancy  Fate  stepping  in  to  say: 


WHICH   IS   SHORT   AND   RATHER   SERIOUS     209 

"Sir,  you  would  direct  this  young  woman's  life?  Nay,  but 
you  have  lost  your  chance.  You  would  shoulder  this  respon 
sibility  ?  Rest  easy,  it  shall  be  removed.  You  would  keep 
your  promise  to  her  dead  father?  And  why  did  you  not 
think  of  that  earlier  and  to  better  purpose  ?  The  time  is 
over-past  — "  How  many  men  have  read  themselves  this 
weary  lecture  ?  With  the  best  will  in  the  world,  Nathan 
found  he  could  do  nothing  for  Nance  now;  the  first  of  the 
year  approached  and  they  were  ceaselessly  busy  at  the  store ; 
and  a  millstone  anxiety  about  Sharpless  weighted  him  down. 
For  Jim  was  sick  enough  now;  there  was  a  day  when  Burke 
went  home  from  his  figuring  to  find  his  friend  huddled  in  the 
bed,  chattering  strange  words  with  what  little  voice  his  cough 
left  him.  Nathan  (whom  the  poor  fellow  looked  at  without 
knowing)  stood  over  him,  listening  with  a  dreadful  sinking 
of  the  heart,  trying  to  calm  him.  "Je  viens  revoir  — 
"Dans  un  grenier  qu'on  est  bien  — "  Jim  gabbled  on  with  the 
secret  and  silly  mirth  of  delirium.  The  other  had  only  the 
slightest  acquaintance  with  the  language,  and:  "Good 
God!"  he  thought  in  terror;  "will  he  die  this  way,  without 
knowing  me,  without  a  word  I  can  understand!"  But 
towards  morning  the  fever  mercifully  abated  enough  for  Jim 
to  come  back  to  reason.  "Don't  tell  Mother,  Nat;  don't 
let  her  get  scared  about  me.  I'm  all  right,  I'll  get  up  pretty 
soon,"  he  said. 

There  began  a  season  upon  which  Burke  to  the  end  of  his 
days  will  look  back  with  cringing.  The  doctor  came ;  Na 
than  got  in  a  nurse  —  an  old  woman  who  smelled  of  the 
whiskey-bottle  and  was  none  too  clean,  but  he  must  have 
somebody.  Burke  himself  sat  up  at  night;  when  he  could, 
Jack  Vardaman  relieved  him.  In  spite  of  Jim's  protest  — 
which  he  constantly  repeated  in  his  brief  moments  of  con 
sciousness  —  Nat  thought  his  family  ought  to  know.  "I've 
told  the  old  man.  I  dare  say  he  calls  it  a  judgment!"  said 
the  doctor,  scornfully.  Heavens,  what  hours  did  they  pass 
in  that  dingy  room:  Jim  with  his  wild  face  covered  with  a 
half-grown  beard,  turning,  turning  on  the  lean,  hard  pillow; 
bottles,  spoons,  linen  rags,  all  the  dismal  tools  of  sickness 
strewed  about;  the  light  shaded  with  one  of  Nathan's  law- 
books  —  Somebody  on  Equity  —  propped  up  open  around 
the  candlestick;  the  sallow  dawn  coming  in  through  the 


210  NATHAN   BURKE 

dirty  window-pane.  Nat  has  spent  the  night  sitting  up 
across  a  couple  of  chairs;  the  shabby  silver  watch,  that  he 
bought  of  the  pawnbroker  for  a  few  dollars,  is  open  beside 
him  to  time  the  patient's  doses,  and  he  rouses  with  a  start 
to  find  it  five  o'clock,  and  another  day  —  Thursday  ?  Or  is 
it  Friday  ?  The  town  clocks  are  striking,  the  milk-carts  can 
be  heard  in  the  streets,  there  is  a  cock  crowing  in  the  stable- 
yard  at  the  corner;  and  Jim,  turning  again,  asks  for  water 
in  his  weak  voice,  and  says  he  guesses  he'll  get  up,  Nat  — 
guesses  he'll  get  up  —  guesses  —  and  make  that  hump 
backed  fellow  at  the  foot  of  the  bed  stop  making  faces  and  go 
away,  confound  him!  It  sometimes  seemed  to  Burke  as  if 
he  had  not  slept  for  years  —  as  if  he  could  not  if  he  tried. 
He  used  to  go  down  to  his  desk  red-eyed,  but  broad  awake, 
and  work  all  day  with  a  steadiness  that  amazed  him  when  he 
recalled  it  afterwards.  His  head  was  clear  even  when  his 
haggard  look  startled  the  other  clerks.  They  passed  the 
word  around  that  Jim  Sharpless  was  very  low.  Nathan 
heard  them  buzzing  the  news  in  corners  with  a  futile  anger. 
It  was  old  Marsh  himself  who  came  to  him  one  day  and  said : 
"Go  home,  Burke,  go  home  —  you  ain't  fit  for  this.  Ain't 
he  any  better?"  with  so  much  of  rough  kindness  in  his  man 
ner  that  the  tears  came  into  the  young  man's  eyes.  He  was 
almost  worn  out.  He  got  down  from  his  stool  and  went  to 
get  his  coat,  and  as  he  did  so,  Mr.  Ducey,  coming  from  the 
front  of  the  store  with  an  important  face,  told  him:  — 

"There's  somebody  asking  for  you,  a  lady  —  um  —  if 
I  were  you  Burke,  I  - 

Nathan  went  out,  dully  wondering;  and  the  lady  —  a 
little  lady  in  a  gray  dress  —  who  was  moving  about  ner 
vously  amongst  the  sugar-barrels  and  bales  of  hides,  put  back 
the  veil  she  wore  over  her  plain  bonnet,  and  came  up  to  him 
with  a  piteous  pale  face  and  her  small  hands  in  shabby 
gloves  held  out,  fluttering. 

"Mr.  Burke?"  she  said  with  a  great  effort  at  calmness. 
And  then  in  a  heart-breaking  voice:  "My  son  —  my  son 
Jim  —  won't  you  take  me  to  him,  please?" 


CHAPTER  XVI 

LONGER  THAN  THE  LAST  AND  SOMEWHAT  MORE  CHEERFUL 

IT  was  with  an  immeasurable  relief  and  thankfulness  that 
Nathan  took  Mrs.  Sharpless  on  his  arm  along  the  streets 
and  back  to  the  boarding-house  and  the  room  where  her 
boy  lay.  And  whether  poor  Jim  had  actually  passed  the 
turning-point  in  that  grave  journey  on  which  he  was  em 
barked,  and  was  on  the  mend,  ever  so  fitfully  and  faintly 
already;  or  whether  his  mother's  coming  decided  the  event, 
we  never  knew;  Vardaman  himself  said  he  could  not  tell. 
But  Burke,  for  one,  has  always  believed  the  latter;  it  is  hard 
to  think  that  her  presence  did  not  have  something  to  do  with 
his  recovery.  She  was  so  brave,  so  patient,  so  resolutely 
hopeful;  she  radiated  perseverance  and  good  cheer.  Nathan 
never  saw  her  break  down  but  that  one  time  in  the  office, 
nor  shed  another  tear,  although  the  sight  of  the  comfortless 
quarters,  of  the  nurse  (the  drunken  old  wretch  was  sleeping 
sprawled  out  on  Nathan's  bed  in  a  hideous  disorder  when 
they  reached  the  house),  of  Jim  disfigured  by  sickness,  quite 
out  of  his  head  so  that  he  did  not  recognize  her  at  all,  and 
croaking,  "For  his  spirit  it  was  tre-men-ju-ous  —  '  in  a 
lamentable  voice  —  all  this  must  have  wrung  the  mother's 
heart.  Mrs.  Sharpless  never  made  a  single  comment,  nor 
even  looked  one;  she  took  off  her  black  bonnet  and  veil  — 
garments  which  appear  to  fulfil  every  woman's  idea  of 
disguise,  or  the  incognito  —  and  sat  down  beside  Jim's  bed. 
And  Burke,  having  turned  out  the  nurse  as  gently  as  he 
could,  and  fetched  Mrs.  Slaney  (who,  indeed,  had  shown 
herself  all  along  very  willing  and  well-meaning,  and  flustered 
and  useless),  was  made  himself  to  go  and  take  some  rest  in  a 
room  good-naturedly  loaned  by  another  lodger.  The  young 
man  protested;  he  was  quite  sure  that  he  couldn't  close  an 
eye,  —  nevertheless  he  did,  in  sheer  exhaustion,  and  slept 

211 


212  NATHAN    BURKE 

heavily  for  hours,  waking  at  last  towards  dusk  with  a  start 
and  the  frightful  consciousness  of  duty  neglected.  He  hur 
ried  to  the  sick  room  in  a  miserable  tremor,  and  peeping  in, 
saw  Mrs.  Sharpless  still  in  her  chair  by  the  bed;  and  Jim 
asleep,  peacefully  and  naturally  asleep  for  the  first  time  in 
days.  The  room  was  full  of  the  clean  winter  twilight,  red 
through  the  west  window;  the  fire  burned  clear  on  a  tidy 
hearth;  there  were  white  sheets  on  their  two  poor  iron  beds, 
a  white  cover  over  the  squalid  table.  And  there  sat  Mrs. 
Sharpless,  with  her  soft  skirts  falling  about  her,  her  pretty, 
sleek,  dark  hair  —  there  was  scarcely  a  thread  of  gray  in  it  — 
her  bright,  kind  face,  a  book  open  on  her  knee  —  it  was  the 
Bible  —  like,  I  swear,  a  little  gray  angel,  an  angel  of  com 
fort  and  of  healing.  She  looked  up  with  a  smile  as  swift  and 
brilliant  as  Jim's  own,  and  laid  her  finger  on  her  lips,  as 
Nathan  crept  in.  "Hush,  the  doctor  has  been  here  —  and 
he  says  he's  better!"  Burke  went  up  to  the  bed,  and  looked 
at  the  sick  man,  more  moved  than  he  would  have  had  her 
see;  he  had  not  known  how  mortal  was  the  fear  that  hung 
over  him  until  it  was  a  little  lessened.  And  I  trust  there 
was  nothing  unmanly  in  his  emotion,  nor  in  the  regard  he 
felt  for  his  friend.  Passing  the  love  of  woman  —  !  Mrs. 
Sharpless  took  his  hand.  "Sir,  you  have  been  very  kind  — 
the  people  here  have  told  me  —  the  doctor  told  me  —  you 
have  been  very  good—  "  she  said.  And  that  was  all;  nor 
was  there  ever  any  more  talk  of  thanks  or  obligation  between 
them.  I  believe  neither  one  ever  thought  of  it. 

Burke  did  not  know  upon  what  terms  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Sharpless  had  allowed  his  wife  to  come  and  tend  her  son. 
It  was  not  unlikely  that  she  had  done  so  without  leave  and 
in  the  face  of  her  husband's  displeasure.  "  Sharpless  senior 
was  a  hard  old  man,"  Jack  Vardaman  used  to  say,  shaking 
his  head  in  wonder  and  a  kind  of  commiseration;  "a  hard, 
stern,  self-righteous  old  man.  When  I  went  to  tell  him  about 
Jim's  illness,  I  felt  as  I  were  dashing  myself  against  a  stone 
wall.  Possibly  I  didn't  make  it  clear  to  him  how  sick  Jim 
was;  he  may  not  have  understood.  But  a  man  of  that 
temper  to  preach  the  Gospel  of  charity  and  long-suffering 
and  tenderness!  It's  cruel  and  absurd  at  once.  For  all 
that,  I  could  see  something  admirable  in  his  unflinching 
consistency;  the  way  he  ground  down  and  obliterated  every 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE  CHEERFUL    213 

vestige  of  fatherly  feeling  from  his  heart.  Jim  was  a  sinner, 
in  open  rebellion  against  the  Almighty  —  and  that  he  was 
this  sinner's  father  was  an  accident  which  he  was  determined 
should  in  no  way  influence  him.  There  was  a  Roman 
strength  of  character  in  the  old  man;  you  couldn't  but  re 
spect  him  even  when  that  conscientious  inhumanity  of  his 
angered  and  repelled  you  most.  It's  easy  to  see  Jim  came 
rightly  by  that  iron  streak  that  kept  him  adhering  to  his 
wrong-headed  notions.  I  believe  the  martyrs  were  made 
of  that  stuff.  Old  Sharpless  was  capable  of  thrusting  his 
hand  into  the  flames,  and  crying  out :  '  This  hath  offended ! ' 
When  it  comes  to  religious  matters,  there's  a  mighty  faint 
boundary-line  between  persecutors  and  persecuted;  give 
either  side  the  upper  hand  and  history  shows  you  what  will 
happen.  It's  a  great  thing  to  be  able  to  lay  down  hope  and 
love  and  ambition  and  everything  that  goes  to  make  life 
tolerable,  and  at  last  life  itself  for  the  sake  of  a  conviction. 
How  many  of  us  can  do  it  ?  I  go  to  church  and  try  to  live 
Christianly;  but  rather  than  be  burned  alive,  wouldn't  I 
have  offered  meat  to  the  idols  ?  I'm  afraid  so  —  I'm  afraid 
so !  Old  Sharpless  wouldn't ;  he  would  have  gone  to  the 
stake  for  his  belief.  And  Jim  would  go  to  the  stake  for  his 
unbelief  —  or  whatever  you  please  to  call  it.  What  differ 
ence  does  it  make  in  the  abstract  which  of  them  is  right  ? 
All  your  prejudices  fade  before  facts  like  that ;  you  can't 
help  feeling  a  little  admiration  and  a  little  pity  for  both  men." 
This  estimate  was  pronounced  by  the  doctor  years  after 
wards,  when  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless  had  been  long  gone 
to  his  rest  under  the  plain  granite  tombstone  in  Greenwood 
Cemetery,  and  had  found  out,  perhaps,  that  that  Power 
whose  awful  judgments  he  preached  so  unsparingly  is  said 
also  to  send  rain  upon  the  just  and  unjust  alike,  nor  lets  the 
sparrow  fall  unheeded.  Nat  Burke,  to  whom  it  fell  to  carry 
to  the  reverend  gentleman  the  news  of  his  son's  continued 
illness  and  of  Mrs.  Sharpless's  decision  to  remain  by  him, 
was  not  so  lenient  as  Vardaman.  He  thought  the  elder 
Sharpless  a  narrow  and  merciless  old  bigot;  and  went  up  the 
path  to  the  parsonage  door  in  a  very  sour  and  contemptuous 
mood.  The  fact  that  this  same  bigot  was  Mary  Sharpless's 
father  weighed  no  more  with  the  young  man  than  the  fact 
that  he  was  Jim's  father;  Nat  was  always  able  to  think  of 


214  NATHAN   BURKE 

Mr.  Sharpless  in  a  certain  detachment,  there  was  so  little 
of  the  natural  man  about  him.  Could  he  ever  have  been  a 
boy  and  played  with  a  top  ?  Or  a  young  man  and  gone 
a-courting  ?  There  was  a  quaint  impossibility  in  the  notion. 
A  subdued  servant-girl  came  to  the  door  and  said  the  minis 
ter  was  in;  and  showed  Nathan  into  the  study.  It  was  a 
sombre  little  place  with  drab-painted  walls,  a  steel-engrav 
ing  of  John  Knox  —  Calvin  —  some  such  worthy,  in  a  nar 
row,  hard,  black  wooden  frame  (appropriate  enough,  Nat 
thought)  over  the  mantelpiece,  and  two  gloomy  black  horse 
hair  chairs  for  the  parson  and  the  penitent  —  for  that  is 
what  the  attitude  and  atmosphere  of  this  room  suggested. 
It  had  a  monastic  look  of  retirement  and  discipline.  Mr. 
Sharpless  rose  from  the  table  where  he  seemed  to  have  been 
meditating  his  Sunday  address  and  taking  notes.  On  the 
sheet  of  foolscap  lying  there,  Nathan  saw  the  text  written 
out  in  the  divine's  big,  black,  powerful  hand:  "Thus  saith 
the  Lord:  Cursed  be  the  man  that  trusteth  in  man,  and 
maketh  flesh  his  arm,  and  whose  heart  departeth  from  the 
Lord." 

"You  wished  to  speak  to  me,  sir?"  said  the  minister,  bend 
ing  on  his  visitor  a  look  so  like  Jim's  in  its  straightforward 
scrutiny  that  Burke  was  momentarily  startled.  In  fact, 
the  father  and  son  were  much  alike  in  appearance,  being 
both  tall,  spare  men  with  a  probable  reserve  of  strength  and 
endurance  hidden  under  a  not  very  robust  exterior.  Nathan 
briefly  stated  his  name  and  errand,  which  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Sharpless  heard  without  change  of  countenance,  sitting  with 
his  hands  loosely  joined,  and  his  steady  eyes  fastened  on 
the  young  man;  he  had  a  long,  thin,  delicate,  and  nervous 
hand,  the  very  model  of  Jim's. 

"He  has  been  terribly  sick,  Dr.  Sharpless,"  said  Burke, 
earnestly,  conscious  of  some  impalpable  barrier,  mental  or 
spiritual,  between  himself  and  the  other.  The  older  man 
was  not  hostile;  he  was  imperturbable,  hopelessly  aloof. 
"He  is  not  out  of  danger  yet,  although  Ja  —  Dr.  Varda- 
man  tells  us  there  is  hope  —  and  —  and  Mrs.  Sharpless 
wants  to  stay  with  him — " 

"It  is  natural,"  said  the  father,  gravely;  "I  should  be  the 
last  man  in  the  world  to  cross  that  desire,  Mr.  Burke.  My 
daughter  will  take  charge  of  the  house.  I  should  be  much 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE   CHEERFUL    215 

obliged  if  you  would  assure  Mrs.  Sharpless  that  —  that  she 
has  no  cause  for  anxiety  about  anything  here,  in  short.     Ah 

—  who  has  been  attending  to  James  —  nursing  him,  I  mean 

—  previous  to  this?" 

"The  doctor  and  I,"  said  Nat,  detecting,  or  fancying  he 
detected,  a  painful  interest  underlying  these  formal  words; 
"he  wasn't  neglected,  Dr.  Sharpless.  Of  course  it  wasn't 
anything  like  what  his  mother  can  do  for  him.  I  can't  tell 
you  how  relieved  we  were  when  she  came.  The  whole  place 
looks  different,  and  Jim  seemed  to  get  better  at  once." 

"I  inquired,"  said  the  minister,  stonily,  "because  I  wish 
to  say,  Mr.  Burke,  that  any  expenses  you  may  have  incurred, 
whether  for  doctor's  bills,  or  nurses,  or  medicines,  or  your 
own  loss  of  time,  I  will,  of  course,  discharge.  You  will  make 
a  memorandum  of  them,  I  trust,  and  let  me  know?" 

"The  doctor  and  druggist  will  send  their  bills  to  you,  if 
you  wish  it,  and  if  Jim  consents,  I  have  no  doubt,"  said 
Burke,  getting  up,  and  it  may  be  implying  unconsciously  by 
his  manner  his  inward  conviction  that  Jim  never  would 
consent  in  the  world.  The  other  rose,  too,  arresting  him 
by  a  gesture  as  Nat  moved  toward  the  door. 

"You,  of  course,  must  know  —  you  must  understand,  Mr. 
Burke,  if  you  know  my  son  and  have  lived  in  intimacy  with 
him,"  said  Sharpless,  with  an  effort,  "that  he  has  fallen  into 
error  —  has  turned  against  Divine  authority  and  wisdom  in 
a  way  I  cannot,  as  a  believing  Christian  and  an  ordained 
minister,  countenance?" 

"I  know  that  you  and  Jim  have  had  a  —  a  difference  of 
opinion,"  said  Burke,  wretchedly  embarrassed. 

"Opinion!"  ejaculated  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless  — 
and  Nathan,  for  once,  recognized  that  he  stood  in  the  pres 
ence  of  an  intolerance  differing  not  at  all  in  degree  or  kind 
from  that  which  lit  the  fires  of  Smithfield.  As  savagely 
fanatical  as  it  was,  as  secure  in  its  own  conceit,  it  rebuked 
the  young  man;  in  comparison  the  large  humanity  and 
liberality  of  mind  on  which,  perhaps,  he  plumed  himself  a 
little,  appeared  mere  spiritual  laziness,  lax  and  feeble  good 
nature.  "Opinion!"  said  Mr.  Sharpless  again.  He  laid 
his  hand  (so  like  Jim's!)  on  the  desk  beside  him,  and  Nathan 
saw  it  tremble.  "But  perhaps  you  yourself  think  as  he 
does  ?"  he  said  with  a  distressing  attempt  at  irony. 


216  NATHAN   BURKE 

"No,  I  can't  say  that,"  said  Burke,  honestly,  stirred  in 
explicably  by  a  feeling  of  pity  and  sincere  respect;   "I'm- 
Fm  not  quite  sure  of  my  beliefs,  Mr.  Sharpless,  but  I  don't 
agree  with  Jim.     We  don't  argue  about  it  —  we  let  it  alone. 
He  is  my  friend  —  that's  enough  for  me." 

"Young  man,"  said  the  minister,  solemnly,  "do  you  call  him 
your  friend  when  you  know  that  his  path  is  the  way  of  hell,  going 
down  by  the  chambers  of  death?  Can  you  see  that,  and  not  put 
out  a  hand  to  save  him?  Do  you  call  that  friendship?  Or 
are  not  you  yourself  one  of  those  to  whom  the  Lord  spoke 
through  the  apostle;  'I  know  thy  works  that  thou  art 
neither  hot  nor  cold.  So  then  because  thou  art  lukewarm  and 
neither  hot  nor  cold,  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  my  mouth.'  " 

"I  may  be,"  said  Burke,  humbly  enough;  "but,  sir,  as  un 
certain  as  I  am  —  I  —  I'm  not  afraid  of  God.1  I  can't  talk 
to  Jim  or  persuade  him  —  I  don't  know  how,  and  I  wouldn't 
if  I  could.  I'm  no  better  man  than  Jim.  I  think  he  is  the 
bravest  and  brightest  and  kindest  I  ever  knew.  Who  am  I  to 
tell  him  or  anybody  what's  right  or  wrong?  I'm  not  quite 
sure  where  it  says  in  the  Bible  something  about  knowing 
people  by  their  fruits,"  said  the  young  fellow,  hesitating, 
and  feeling  himself,  as  the  other  had  intimated,  a  pretty 
shabby  sort  of  Christian;  "but  we  haven't  much  other  way 
of  judging,  it  seems  to  me."  And  having  delivered  this  un 
conscionably  long  speech  with  a  hot  color  and  some  stammer 
ing,  Mr.  Burke  took  up  his  hat  and  edged  toward  the  door, 
devoutly  thankful  that  the  interview  was  ended.  In  fact  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless  allowed  him  to  depart  without 
further  argument,  whether  in  indifference,  or  discouragement, 
or  with  the  belief  entertained  by  some  theologians  —  as  I've 
understood  —  that  he  might  be  saved  anyhow  through  in 
vincible  ignorance.  Except  one  other,  it  was  the  only  inti 
mate  conversation  —  if  one  may  even  call  it  that  —  Burke 
ever  had  with  Jim's  father;  who,  nevertheless,  remembered 
the  young  man's  face,  and  saluted  him  with  a  grave  and 
scrupulous  courtesy  whenever  they  chanced  to  meet. 

1  Someone  has  scrawled  in  the  margin : 

"  He's  a  Good  Fellow,  and  'twill  all  be  well ! " 

The  handwriting  is  not  Burke's,  and  we  cannot  identify  it.     There  is 
nothing  to  show  that  the  general  was  at  all  familiar  with  Omar. — M.S.W. 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE   CHEERFUL    217 

Mrs.  Sharpless  now  taking  almost  entire  charge  of  Jim  ex 
cept  for  a  few  hours  night  and  morning,  and  his  condition 
rapidly  bettering,  the  room  assumed  a  cheerfulness  of  aspect 
that  warmed  the  heart.  The  boots  and  pipes  vanished.  It 
was  the  lady's  own  neat  skirts  and  aprons  that  hung  behind 
the  red  calico  drapery.  The  white  covers  stayed  miracu 
lously  white;  there  were  no  rolls  of  lint  on  the  floor,  no  dust 
on  the  ridges  of  the  furniture.  Truly  these  things  had  not 
irked  the  young  men  much  before,  but  Mr.  Burke  noted  not 
without  surprise  that  it  was  possible  to  be  comfortable  and 
yet  keep  straightened  up  —  which  is  the  proper  technical 
term,  I  am  given  to  understand.  Jim's  mother  accomplished 
these  reforms  without  any  kind  of  talk  or  bustle,  something 
which  must  be  all  but  unheard-of  for  one  woman  in  another 
woman's  house.  But  Mrs.  Sharpless  actually  made  a  friend 
of  Mrs.  Slaney!  She  even  went  down  into  the  slimy,  grimy 
kitchen  and  cooked  little  messes  for  Jim  without  antagoniz 
ing  the  landlady.  I  doubt  whether  Mrs.  Ducey  could  have 
done  it. 

"I'm  —  I'm  afraid  it  ain't  what  you've  been  used  to, 
ma'am,"  faltered  the  widow,  timidly,  the  first  time  Mrs. 
Sharpless  sat  down  to  her  slatternly  dinner-table.  Good 
Lord,  that  dreadful  table  —  with  the  red-checked  cotton 
table-cloth  —  with  the  fly-blown  pewter  castor  in  the  mid 
dle  —  with  the  sticky  stone-ware  plates  —  with  the  fried 
steak  swimming  in  sepia-colored  gravy  —  with  the  extraordi 
nary  translucent,  glistening  gray,  boiled  potatoes  !  "  Every 
thing  is  as  nice  as  can  be,  Mrs.  Slaney,  and  I'm  sure  my  boy 
is  very  lucky  to  be  in  such  a  good  home  with  such  kind  friends," 
said  the  little  lady,  gallantly.  And  the  livery-stable  keeper 
from  the  corner,  who  was  boarding  with  us  just  then,  stopped 
cleaning  his  nails  to  stare  at  her  across  the  table.  He  never 
swore  once  during  Mrs.  Sharpless's  stay!  Everybody  left  off 
abusing  the  food,  and  poking  questionable  pleasantries  at  the 
down-at-heel  mulatto  girl  who  waited  on  us.  Mrs.  Sharpless 
never  said  or  did  a  thing  in  reproof  or  disapproval;  but,  in 
deed,  coarseness  and  vulgarity  slunk  away  abashed  from  that 
brave,  pure  presence.  Burke  took  an  absurd  and  unwar 
ranted  pride  in  the  spectacle;  he  wanted  to  cry  out  boastfully: 
"Look  at  her!  This  is  my  friend's  mother.  Did  you  ever 
see  a  finer  lady,  or  a  kinder  heart  ?  " 


218  NATHAN   BURKE 

During  this  time  Nat  himself  was  camping  light-heartedly  in 
an  unoccupied  room  of  Mrs.  Slaney's,  which  was  augrenier" 
indeed  —  up  the  attic  stairs  and  unplastered,  with  the  walls 
and  ceiling  displaying  that  reverse  view  of  a  shingled  roof 
with  cobwebbed  rafters  and  the  points  of  ten-penny-nails 
bristling  through,  which  the  young  gentleman's  previous 
experience  of  stable-lofts  had  rendered  not  unfamiliar  to  him. 
His  pallet  on  the  floor  was  next-door  neighbor  to  a  bushel  or  so 
of  black  walnuts  spread  out  in  a  desiccating  mat  of  hulls;  and 
the  odd  crannies  were  cluttered  with  old  shoes,  old  bonnets, 
old  lanterns,  and  teakettles  out  of  commission,  old  broken 
and  banged  china  and  tin-ware  and  —  blush,  oh  ye  virgins, 
and  ye  matrons  hide  your  faces !  —  a  weird  collection  of 
derelict  corsets  and  hoop-skirts  and  nameless  articles  padded 
with  hair  and  cotton  —  enough  for  two  or  three  Mrs.  Slaneys, 
you  would  have  thought.  Nathan,  who  had  been  a  handy, 
inventive  lad  in  his  backwoods  days,  fashioned  a  mouse-trap 
out  of  one  of  the  hoop-skirts,  an  engine  which  he  found  ex 
ceedingly  useful  in  those  regions.  He  borrowed  an  excitable 
little  terrier  of  one  of  the  boys  at  the  store;  and  the  time 
being  ripe,  wrent  down  into  the  back  yard,  and  let  loose  his 
captives  under  the  quivering  nose  and  three-legged,  trembling 
anxiety  of  the  terrier,  who  incontinently  fell  upon  them  and 
smote  them  hip  and  thigh  to  the  great  content  and  entertain 
ment  of  all  the  small  boys  of  the  neighborhood;  and  with  Jim 
himself,  who  could  sit  up  a  short  while  now  every  day,  looking 
on  from  the  window  above  and  applauding  with  his  weak 
hands.  "  Mother  couldn't  stand  the  spectacle,"  he  ex 
plained  as  Nathan,  reentering  the  room,  looked  about  for  that 
lady.  "  I  suppose  she  was  thinking  about  the  widows  and 
orphans.  Anyway  the  first  thing  I  knew  she  and  Mary  had 
disappeared.  They  are  probably  sitting  with  their  fingers 
in  their  ears  and  their  faces  to  the  wall  in  some  remote  cor 
ner." 

"She  and  Mary  ?"  repeated  Burke,  in  a  mighty  inward 
commotion;  "you  mean  your  —  your  sister  ? " 

"  Yes.  She's  here  —  didn't  you  see  her  ?  She  came  in  just 
now.  You  must  have  been  down  in  the  yard  already,  though. 
What's  queer  about  it,  Nat  ?  Why  wouldn't  Mary  come  to 
see  me?  Father  wouldn't  make  her  stay  away  any  more  than 
he  would  mother,  you  know,"  said  Jim,  in  that  tone  of  de- 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE   CHEERFUL    219 

fence  which,  oddly  and  inconsistently  enough,  one  might  have 
thought,  he  always  adopted  at  any  criticism  of  his  father 
except  his  own. 

"I — I  didn't  know — "  stuttered  the  other,  glancing  ner 
vously  at  the  mirror;  "I  —  I  didn't  think  —  I  guess  I'd 
better  get  out,  hadn't  I  ?  She'll  want  to  have  you  to  her 
self,  I  expect  — 

' '  Get  out  —  stuff !  The  idea !  Here  —  where're  you  going, 
Nat  ?  Don't  go  away  —  don't !  Hang  it,  she  wants  to 
meet  you  —  she  was  saying  so  just  a  minute  ago  —  and  I 
want  her  to,  too.  Look  here,  you  must,  you  know.  Here 
they  are  back  now!" 

Mr.  Burke,  turning  a  fine  purple  from  head  to  heels,  acutely 
conscious  of  the  traces  of  the  recent  conflict  about  him,  and 
with  a  secret  dread  that  his  stock  was  coming  unbuckled  at 
the  back,  executed  what  was  probably  the  most  awkward  bow 
ever  performed  by  mortal  man,  to  Miss  Sharpless  who  that 
moment  came  in  with  her  mother.  The  young  lady  went  up 
to  him  and  put  out  her  small,  slim,  cool  hand,  taking  Nathan's 
big  clumsy  one  with  a  very  frank  and  winning  grace.  She 
lifted  to  him,  under  the  shadow  of  her  pretty  bonnet,  the  eyes 
he  so  well  remembered.  "You've  been  so  good  to  Jim,  Mr. 
Burke.  I  don't  know  how  we  are  ever  going  to  thank  you." 

"I  —  I  haven't  done  anything,"  said  the  honest  youth, 
confused  and  bashful.  Nor,  in  fact,  had  he;  people  seemed 
determined  to  overrate  him;  and  to  the  ordinary  upright 
and  sensible  man  I  can  conceive  of  few  feelings  more  mor 
tifying  than  that  of  finding  himself  praised  and  valued  for 
qualities  which  he  knows  he  does  not  possess. 

"Nothing  at  all  —  it's  agreed  you've  done  nothing,"  said 
Jim,  waving  his  hand.  "Come  here  and  sit  on  the  bed,  Nat, 
cold-hearted,  niggardly,  selfish,  unprincipled  brute  that  you 
are.  Let  the  ladies  have  the  chairs,  ruffian.  This  is  our 
bower,  Mary.  Don't  you  admire  it?" 

"I  think  it's  a  very  nice  room,"  said  Mary,  politely.  She 
perched  on  one  of  the  chairs  as  daintily  as  a  bird  and  let  her 
gaze  travel  about  the  apartment  in  unfeigned  curiosity.  "I 
never  knew  how  men  lived  —  alone,  I  mean  —  before." 

"You  don't  know  now,"  said  the  invalid,  grinning  over  his 
haggard  face.  "  Mother's  got  us  all  cleaned  up  —  nobody  can 
find  anything,  so  she's  perfectly  happy." 


220  NATHAN   BURKE 

"I  hope  that's  just  your  fun,  Jim,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  in  a 
little  anxiety.  She  turned  to  Burke.  "I  —  I  don't  want  to 
make  you  uncomfortable,  you  know.  The  pipes  are  all  in 
the  table-drawer,  Mr.  Burke;  it's  a  little  more  —  more  con 
venient  than  the  mantelpiece,  don't  you  think?  And  I  put 
your  books  back  exactly  in  the  same  places  every  day  when 
I  dust  them.  I've  had  a  good  deal  of  experience  dusting  men's 
books.  I  haven't  changed  anything  —  to  speak  of,  I  mean." 

"  Why,  wasn't  it  like  this  when  you  came?  "  Mary  asked  her. 
Mrs.  Sharpless  made  a  little  gesture  and  her  bright  eyes  sud 
denly  filled. 

"Oh,  Mary,  you  ought  to  have  seen  it.  What  do  you 
think  ?  Those  poor  boys  were  keeping  their  coal  in  a 
barrel!" 

"In  a  barrel!  "  echoed  Mary,  in  a  tone  of  equal  tragedy. 
The  young  men  exchanged  a  stare  of  bewilderment.  Why 
not  keep  the  coal  in  a  barrel  f  To  be  sure  it  was  in  a  decent- 
looking  scuttle  now  —  as  Burke  noticed  for  the  first  time  — 
but  both  ladies  seemed  profoundly  moved  by  this  simple  in 
cident.  If  that  was  the  way  some  of  their  surroundings 
struck  Mrs.  Sharpless,  what  did  she  think  of  others,  Nat  re 
flected,  horrified. 

"And  I  think  it's  awful  the  place  you're  sleeping  in  now, 
Mr.  Burke,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  addressing  him  energeti 
cally.  "I'm  sure  Mrs.  Slaney  might  fix  up  something  nicer 
than  that  for  you  —  that  horrid  hole  !  I  climbed  the  stair 
and  looked  at  it  the  other  day.  It's  a  nest  of  rats  and  mice  — 
Br-r-r!  No  wonder  you  had  to  trap  them." 

"Mrs.  Slaney!   What  a  name!"  ejaculated  Mary. 

"Is  it  true,  Nat  ?  Where  are  you  ?  In  the  cellar  ?  In  the 
woodshed?"  Jim  cried  out,  struggling  up  on  his  poor,  thin, 
trembling  arm.  He  was  quite  weak  still,  and  the  tears  came 
into  his  eyes  as  he  clutched  Nathan  by  the  lapel  of  his  coat. 
"Where  are  you  sleeping,  Nathan  ?  I'm  such  a  mullet-head 
I  never  thought  to  ask  !" 

"Why,  Great  Scott,  I'm  on  the  third  floor  and  as  comfort 
able  as  a  man  can  be,"  said  the  other,  soothingly.  "Mrs. 
Slaney  hasn't  got  a  better  room  in  the  house.  It's  a  great  deal 
warmer  than  this."  Which  last  statement  was  no  more  than 
the  plain  truth,  for  a  brick  chimney-stack  with  two  or  three 
flues  passing  up  through  the  attic  at  a  point  where  Mr. 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE   CHEERFUL    221 

Burke  could  settle  his  feet  against  it,  he  slept  in  unexampled 
luxury. 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  said  Jim,  falling  back.  "If  you're  ever 
sick,  I'll  get  even  with  you,  Nat  Burke,"  he  added  with  a  kind 
of  vindictive  affection. 

The  mother  looked  at  them  both  with  eyes  of  fond  under 
standing;  and  Mary  with  an  innocent  interest  which  Burke 
found  no  less  touching  and  captivating.  He  thought  himself 
the  luckiest  fellow  in  the  world  thus  to  be  brought  into  con 
tact  with  Jim's  sister,  and  sat  amazed  at  this  happy  fortune. 
She  was  everything  he  had  fancied  her  when  he  used  to  sit 
and  dream  in  the  back  pew,  and  watch  her  at  her  worship; 
the  realization  filled  him  with  content  and  pleasure.  Miss 
Sharpless  presently  took  off  her  bonnet  and  moved  about, 
looking  at  this  and  that  and  asking  questions,  as  artlessly 
friendly  as  a  child;  her  head  of  black  braids  scarcely  came  up 
to  Nathan's  shoulder;  she  told  him  that  his  shelves  were  put 
up  as  high  as  for  the  "sons  of  Anak,"  and  stood  on  a  chair 
which  he  steadied  for  her  with  a  hand  on  the  seat  alongside 
her  trim  little  feet  and  ankles  in  neat  gaiters  (Nathan  could 
have  held  them  both  in  one  of  his  great  hulking  fists!),  and 
took  down  Blackstone  and  read  out  of  it  with  a  ferocious 
emphasis  some  dictum  about  women  and  minors  and  idiots 
not  being  allowed  control  of  their  property,  with  a  little 
shriek  of  disdain.  "I  don't  like  your  old  Law  !  Women  and 
idiots  indeed —  !"  she  said  and  made  a  face  and  smacked 
the  book  to  wrathf  ully.  Nathan  thought  her  adorably  sweet, 
simple,  womanly.  He  took  her  home  through  the  falling 
dusk,  carrying  her  music-roll;  and  she  clung  to  his  arm  where 
the  crossings  were  icy;  he  would  have  liked  to  lift  her  over 
them  bodily  —  or  spread  down  his  coat  for  her  to  tread  upon, 
like  another  Raleigh.  They  talked  all  the  way  about  Jim, 
and,  I  dare  say,  a  little  about  Mr.  Nat  Burke,  much  more 
than  the  young  man  knew,  it  is  likely.  He  went  back  to  the 
boarding-house  in  the  beatific  prospect  of  seeing  her  again 
shortly  on  another  visit  to  her  brother  —  and  wondered  rather 
scornfully  what  had  possessed  Jim  to  imagine  that  his  sister 
was  in  the  least  bit  a  coquette.  Nothing  that  Nat  could  see 
in  her  warranted  the  charge  —  do  we  not  all  know  that  mem 
bers  of  the  same  family  never  understand  one  another,  and 
that  brothers  are  notoriously  unfair  ? 


222  NATHAN   BURKE 

I  am  uncertain  whether  at  this  stage  of  his  career  Mr. 
Burke  was  an  ordinary  sentimental  young  fool,  or  merely  a 
very  lonely  boy  of  a  more  or  less  gentle  and  affectionate  dis 
position.  Perhaps  he  was  a  little  of  both.  This  young  man, 
who  felt  within  him  all  sorts  of  pathetic  and  ill-defined  im 
pulses  towards  things  beautiful  and  good,  who,  in  his  simple 
fashion  tried  to  keep  his  eyes  on  the  heights,  had  never  known 
a  home  or  mother  of  his  own  —  had  never  spoken  to  a  lady 
upon  equal  terms  in  his  whole  life  before,  nor  been  ad 
dressed  —  except  by  one  little  girl  —  as  anything  but  an 
inferior  order  of  creature.  It  never  entered  his  head  to  com 
plain,  or  to  pity  himself ;  he  had  a  serviceable  gift  of  humor 
that  may  have  saved  him  many  a  heartburn,  and  he  humbly 
believed  (as  he  does  at  this  moment)  that  a  man  may  be  a 
gentleman  without  either  name,  or  traditions,  or  upbringing, 
or  social  recognition,  or  any  other  qualifications  than  a  good 
head  and  heart.  But  he  was  sometimes  intolerably  solitary 
in  his  man's  world.  He  liked  work;  he  liked  achievement; 
he  had  definite  ambitions,  a  standard  not  easily  satisfied;  a 
purposeful  pride  urged  him  on.  Yet  there  were  moments 
when  in  those  moods  of  causeless  but  none  the  less  heartsick- 
ening  melancholy  which  overtake  all  young  men,  he  won 
dered  bitterly  to  what  end  was  all  his  striving  ?  Who  cared 
what  he  did,  or  whither  he  went,  or  how  he  fared?  Fame 
and  laurels,  or  a  pauper's  tombstone  in  a  corner  of  the  potter's 
field  —  it  was  all  one.  There  was  nobody  to  rejoice  in  his 
successes,  nobody  to  champion  him  in  defeat.  He  pictured 
himself  with  sour  mirth  half  a  century  hence,  a  rough,  hard 
ened,  old  man  like  George  Marsh,  laughed  at  and  fawned  upon 
and  feared,  full-handed,  empty-hearted.  He  figured  with  a 
foolish  wistfulness  what  it  would  be  to  have  some  one  who 
needed  him,  leaned  on  him,  shared  with  him  —  to  have  some 
woman  worrying  over  him  as  Mrs.  Ducey  worried  over  her 
William  —  over  Georgie.  In  that  respect  any  one  of  his 
fellow-clerks  or  the  other  young  men  he  knew  was  better  off 
than  he.  Some  of  them  were  married,  and  Nathan,  with  an 
obscure  pang  of  longing,  used  to  observe  them  buying  toys  at 
Christmas  and  fireworks  for  Independence  Day.  He  had 
been  asked  to  their  homes,  had  even  dined  there,  and  met 
their  wives,  mothers,  and  sisters.  Alas,  too  often  Mrs. 
Clerk  was  a  faded,  frowzy  woman  in  a  soiled  morning-wrapper 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE   CHEERFUL    223 

and  the  babies  cried  and  squabbled,  and  there  wasn't  quite 
enough  pumpkin-pie  to  go  around  unless  Mama-in-law 
Clerk  refused  —  which  she  always  did  with  the  air  of  an  early 
Christian  martyr  —  and  the  young  ladies,  ^  Jack  ^  Clerk's 
sisters,  were  big,  bouncing,  giggling,  loud-voiced  girls  who 
made  eyes,  and  squealed:  "Oh,  now,  Mr.  Burke!"  at  every 
thing  that  gentleman  said  or  did,  and  accused  him  of  being 
the  worst  cut  up!  Yet  of  so  robust  a  stuff  was  Mr.  Nat's  power 
of  idealization  that  he  refused  to  believe  that  all  homes  and 
"female  society"  were  as  these ;  he  thought,  blushing  shyly 
to  himself,  that  Mary  Sharpless's  house  would  be  a  differ 
ent  place,  and  contrasted  her  manners  with  those  of  the 
Misses  Clerk,  greatly  to  the  disadvantage  of  those  amiable 
ladies. 

Miss  Sharpless  —  who,  nevertheless,  possessed  an  unusual 
and  beautiful  pair  of  eyes  eminently  adapted  to  such  a  pur 
pose  —  never  exerted  them  after  this  killing  style  upon  Nat, 
at  any  rate.  And  undoubtedly  it  did  not  occur  to  her  to 
charge  so  long,  lean,  sober,  and  quiet  a  young  man  with  being 
a  lively  rogue  such  as  the  term  " cut-up"  implies.  She  used, 
on  her  visits,  to  sit  sedately  and  darn  Jim's  socks,  and  talk  to 
both  young  fellows  in  a  strain  of  frank  interest  as  if  they  were 
equally  her  brothers.  Sometimes  she  read  aloud  in  her 
pleasant,  clear,  well-modulated  voice,  On  their  walks  home, 
she  would  question  Nathan,  gravely,  about  his  prospects; 
she  would  listen  enthusiastically  to  his  plans,  which,  I  fear, 
Mr.  Burke  poured  out  with  very  great  freedom  and  detail. 
She  asked  him  in  and  played  for  him,  and  Nat,  to  whom 
music  in  general  was  a  more  or  less  agreeable  but  always 
wholly  unintelligible  noise,  listened  in  rapt  delight !  It  was 
fugues  and  masses  and  noble  solemn  chants  which  Mary 
performed  for  him  on  the  jingling  old  piano  —  "maybe  I'll 
earn  enough  to  buy  a  new  one  some  day,"  she  would  say 
with  a  sigh  and  a  sweet,  pensive  look.  What  wTould  not  Nat 
Burke  have  given  to  have  been  able  to  go  straight  out  and 
send  her  a  Broadwood  grand?  How  he  envied  —  he,  who 
couldn't  tell  a  jig  from  a  funeral  march  —  the  callous  little 
urchins  who  took  lessons  from  her! 

"I  suppose  she  plays  you  waltzes  and  country-dances,  of 
course,  Nat?"  Sharpless  inquired  one  day  with  a  singular 
and  rather  mischievous  expression. 


224  NATHAN   BURKE 

"James!"  said  his  mother,  in  a  troubled  voice,  "don't 
joke.  You  know  very  well  Mary  can't  help  it." 

"Why,  I  don't  see  why  you're  in  such  a  taking  about  it. 
Mary  could  find  a  hundred  justifications  in  Holy  Writ  itself. 
I  never  heard  of  a  thing  you  couldn't  get  some  kind  of  au 
thority  for  out  of  the  Bible.  Hand  it  here,  will  you,  Nat  ? 
Didn't  David  dance  before  the  Ark?" 

"James!"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless  again,  quite  shocked;  and 
Mary  gathered  her  sewing  together  and  rose  with  a  deal  of 
dignity. 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you  to  talk,  Jim,"  she  said  in'a  tone 
that  intimated  it  was  perfectly  brutal;  and  while  Burke 
looked  on,  puzzled,  not  at  all  understanding  the  little  scene; 
"at  least,"  said  Mary,  flushing  with  an  appealing  glance 
directed  at  him  for  some  reason,  "at  least  I  don't  offend  my 
father  to  his  face,  and  embitter  his  life  with  dissensions,  and  — 
and  set  people  gossiping.  /  don't  — 

"Of  course  not.  You're  entirely  open  and  above-board 
and  act  up  to  your  convictions  —  all  women  do,"  said  Jim, 
with  exasperating  good-nature.  "Look  at  'em,  Nat. 
They're  two  of  as  honest  women  —  Good  Lord,  Ma,  don't 
look  so,  I  mean  honest  like  a  man,  you  know  —  I  say,  Nathan, 
they're  as  honest  as  any  woman  ever  is,  and  they  haven't 
told  the  truth  to  father  for  years  !  They'll  look  you  straight 
in  the  eye  and  lie  like  a  missionary  —  for  your  good,  you 
know  —  to  make  you  happy  and  comfortable  !  Yes,  Mrs. 
Sharpless,  how  do  you  expect  to  answer  for  it  on  the  Judg 
ment  Day  when  the  secrets  of  all  hearts  will  be  laid  bare  ? 
What  are  you  going  to  say,  Madame?  It  will  take  two, 
large,  powerfully  muscled  angels  to  drag  mother  on  the  stand. 
She  will  resist.  She  will  cry  big  tears.  '  Lawk,  mum,  don't 
take  on  so!  'Tain't  a  mite  of  use,  you  know.  Look  out, 
Mike,  easy  does  it!  Don't  go  for  to  shove  a  lady!'  says 
Gabriel.  They  fall  back,  Michael  respectfully  removing 
his  halo  to  mop  his  brow.  'What's  this  prisoner  charged 
with? '  says  Peter,  glowering  terribly  at  mother  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  whole  of  the  First  Presbyterian  congregation,  and 
all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  including  a  lot  of  Hottentots  in 
ostrich-feather  petticoats,  and  South-Sea  Islanders  in  noth 
ing  at  all.  Just  think,  they'll  all  be  craning  and  stretching 
and  staring,  all  the  old  deacons  and  elders,  partly  at  mother, 
but  mostly  at  the  South-Sea  Islanders  — !" 


LONGER   AND   SOMEWHAT   MORE   CHEERFUL    225 

"James!"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  helplessly;  "oh,  I  know 
it's  awful  the  way  you  talk,  but  somehow  you  make  me  want 
to  laugh!" 

"Up  steps  Satan  and  being  duly  sworn,  deposes  that  Laura 
Sharpless  to  his  certain  knowledge,  and  acting  —  by  George, 
yes !  —  acting  on  his  advice,  has  aided  and  abetted  another 
criminal,  to  wit:  Mary  Sharpless,  in  deceiving  one  Jona 
than  Edwards  Sharpless  (sensation  in  the  sheep  gallery), 
father  of  James  Sharpless  (sensation  in  the  goat  gallery) ,  into 
believing  that  said  Mary  never  plays  dance-music,  nor  per 
forms  at  any  entertainment  for  the  assembled  company  to 
dance,  such  being  contrary  to  said  John  E.  Sharpless's  prin 
ciples  and  belief,  and  a  godless  and  heathenish  form  of  amuse 
ment.  Whereas,  in  fact,  said  Mary  has  been  doing  it  every 
day  for  years  whenever  anybody  would  pay  her,  and  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  town  knows  it  but  her  father — " 

"If  you've  finished,  Jim  — "  Mary  began  indignantly. 

Her  brother  sank  back  among  his  pillows,  and  wagged  his 
hand  feebly.  "At  this  point,  proceedings  were  interrupted 
by  one  of  the  cherubim  falling  downstairs,"  he  said,  grinning 
at  Nathan.  "Never  mind  these  revelations,  ladies,  Nat 
doesn't  care  how  many  fibs  you  tell." 

It  was  the  truth;  Nat  didn't  care.  He  saw  something 
touching  in  this  poor  little  deception  rendered  necessary  or 
at  least  excusable  by  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless's  ridiculous 
despotism.  "I  —  I  must  do  it,  you  know,  Mr.  Burke," 
Mary  said  to  him  tremulously  as  they  parted  on  the  rectory 
doorstep  that  evening;  "we  need  the  money."  She  looked 
like  an  angel  as  she  said  it  —  she  was  an  angel,  the  young 
fellow  thought.  Could  he  but  take  care  of  her,  she  would 
need  neither  to  work,  or  to  tell  stories  any  more  —  she  should 
have  all  her  small  feminine  desires,  pretty  clothes,  and  jewels 
and  —  and  —  he  strode  away  with  his  head  full  of  foolish 
dreams. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

IN  WHICH  —  THE  HORSE  BEING  STOLEN  —  NATHAN  SHUTS 
THE  STABLE  DOOR 

BURKE  had  already  returned  to  his  desk  while  some  of  the 
events  last  recited  were  taking  place;  and  was  a  good  deal 
surprised,  touched,  and  pleased  at  the  warmth  of  his  recep 
tion.  The  clerks  came  and  pumped  his  hands  up  and  down, 
and  thumped  him  on  the  back  with  awkward  cordiality; 
there  was  a  note  of  genuine  feeling  in  their  rough,  boyish 
voices  as  they  told  him  they  had  missed  him,  and  asked  after 
Jim.  Mr.  Ducey  welcomed  him  and  made  inquiries  affably 
and  kindly;  old  Marsh  alone  displayed  no  interest,  to  the 
casual  view.  "Huh,  Nathan!"  was  all  he  said,  looking  up 
over  his  glasses,  as  the  young  man  entered,  precisely  as  if  he 
had  not  noticed  his  head-clerk's  absence  at  all.  An  associa 
tion  for  any  length  of  time  with  George  Marsh  was  tolerably 
certain  to  correct  any  notions  his  subordinates  might  enter 
tain  of  their  own  value  and  importance;  yet  Nat  thought  he 
detected  a  degree  of  trust  and  satisfaction  in  the  old  fellow's 
familiar  grunt;  and,  in  fact,  would  have  been  somewhat 
taken  aback  at  any  manifestation  of  sentiment  from  him. 
There  was  a  queer  wordless  sympathy  between  them  in  spite 
of  the  wide  difference  in  their  years  and  characters.  So 
that,  when  Mr.  Marsh,  laying  down  his  paper  and  following 
thoughtfully  Nat's  actions  as  the  latter  made  his  preparations 
for  work,  remarked  finally  in  a  tone  of  elaborate  abstraction: 
"I  shouldn't  wonder  if  you'd  find  plenty  to  do,  Burke. 
We've  had  to  get  a  fellow  in  your  place,  of  course,  while  you 
was  away,"  Nathan  perceived  —  what  surely  no  one  else 
would  —  a  kind  of  amusement,  irony,  or  mischief  either  in 
his  speech  or  manner,  and  turned  to  look  at  him  questioningly . 
The  other  met  his  eye  with  a  humorous  gravity. 

"  I  said  we'd  had  to  get  in  somebody  —  a  new  man.  Came 

226 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       227 

and  offered  himself,  here  a  week  or  so  ago.  He  hasn't  been 
particularly  efficient  —  but  he's  a  good-hearted  chap,  Nat; 
he  means  well." 

"Who  is  it?     What's  his  name?"  Burke  asked,  puzzled. 

"Why,  George  Ducey,  to  be  sure,"  said  Mr.  Marsh;  and 
then,  observing  the  expression  of  blank  astonishment  and  not 
a  little  concern  —  certainly  anything  but  complimentary  to 
George  —  on  the  younger  man's  face,  he  fell  back  in  his 
arm-chair  lost  in  laughter.  His  heavy  sides  shook;  he  had 
to  remove  his  chew  of  tobacco;  keeping  in  the  meanwhile 
one  small,  shrewd,  active  old  eye  on  the  outer  regions  of  the 
store  where  Ducey  senior  was  employed  with  a  customer. 
"Why  not  George,  hey?"  he  demanded  between  chuckles, 
"damn  it,  Burke,  to  look  at  you,  one  might  think  you  abso 
lutely  didn't  trust  George.  You  don't  seem  to  cotton  to  the 
notion  of  George  keeping  your  books.  By  damn,  sir,  I'm 
George's  uncle,  and  I  don't  know  whether  I  like  your  man 
ners!" 

"Why,  I  —  I  —  of  course  George  is  all  right,  Mr.  Marsh," 
said  Burke,  trying  not  to  look  his  anxiety  as  he  opened  the 
ledger  —  whereat  old  George  only  laughed  the  more.  "Only 
he  isn't  very  familiar  with  figures,  you  know.  And  — "  he 
caught  the  other's  eye,  and  grinned  against  his  will,  "well, 
it's  about  the  last  thing  in  the  world  I  should  have  expected 
from  George,  and  that's  the  truth,"  he  confessed. 

"You're  mistaken,  sir,"  said  the  old  gentleman,  severely; 
"George  knows  all  about  figures  —  more  than  you  know  - 
more  than  7  know  —  more  than  anybody  knows.  There  is 
nothing  left  for  George  to  learn.  If  you  don't  believe  it, 
look  at  the  books.  I  went  over  'em  myself  every  night,  and 
I'm  free  to  say,  sir,  I  never  saw  anything  equal  to  the  way 
George  can  keep  accounts!"  He  took  out  his  huge  old  ban 
danna  handkerchief  and  blew  a  sounding  blast.  "Well, 
Nat,"  he  added  with  real  seriousness,  "the  boy  did  mean 
well  —  it's  like  you  say,  I  never  would  have  thought  he'd 
do  it.  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  always  been  just  to  George;  and 
then  he's  pretty  young  still  —  he'll  grow.  But  he  did  come 
down  here  —  during  the  holidays  it  was,  too,  just  after  he  got 
back  from  college  —  and  he  did  offer  to  do  your  work,  and  he 
did  try  after  his  fashion.  To  be  sure  I  don't  believe  he'd 
have  held  out  much  longer  at  it  —  there  ain't  any  perse- 


228  NATHAN    BURKE 

verance  or  stick-at-one-thing-ness  to  George  —  he  wasn't 
born  that  way  —  but  give  him  credit  —  give  him  credit.  He 
won't  get  to  be  President,  but  he'll  keep  out  of  the  Peniten 
tiary,  I  guess."  And  with  this  pointed  witticism,  Mr.  Marsh 
resumed  his  survey  of  the  market-reports,  having  had  his 
joke  out  and  mightily  enjoyed  its  effect  on  Nathan. 

From  this  and  sundry  other  remarks  of  his  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  uncle  had  but  a  small  opinion  of  the  nephew;  it 
would  have  been  hard  to  fancy  two  people  less  likely  to  agree. 
The  older  man  never  scrupled  to  express  himself  plainly; 
and  if  the  younger  did  not  always  set  forth  exactly  what  he 
thought  of  Uncle  George  to  Uncle  George,  he  was  not,  perhaps, 
the  first  man  who  has  made  an  effort  to  keep  on  civil  terms 
with  a  wealthy  old  relative  whose  namesake  he  was  and  whose 
heir  he  might  be.  Besides  George  Ducey  was  endowed  with 
a  stout  armor  of  self-conceit,  calculated  to  turn  aside  the  heav 
iest  blows  of  sarcasm  or  ridicule  —  illi  robur  et  aes  triplex  ! 
Strong  oak  and  thrice-laid  brass  encased  this  hero.  It  was 
seldom  that  his  uncle's  blunt  shafts  could  penetrate  it;  and 
on  the  rare  occasions  when  George  after  repeated  assaults 
did  become  uneasily  conscious  that  he  was  being  made  game 
of  or  sneered  at,  his  native  serenity  —  for  he  was  really  a 
most  good-tempered  and  amiable  fellow  —  soon  returned. 
"Uncle  George  nevah  can  remembah  that  I've  grown  up/' 
he  would  explain  indulgently;  "he's  getting  old,  y'know." 

George  had,  indeed,  the  other  men  as  well  as  Mr.  Marsh 
informed  Burke,  come  down  to  the  office  as  soon  as  he  reached 
home  a  few  days  before  Christmas,  upon  hearing  of  the  plight 
they  were  in,  and  gallantly  undertaken  Nathan's  duties; 
and  stuck  to  his  post  for  a  week  or  more  although  the  work 
was  hard  and  tedious  (or  would  have  been  if  he  had  under 
stood  anything  about  it),  the  office  a  dull,  dark,  dirty  hole,  and 
the  company  highly  disagreeable  to  any  young  gentleman  of 
George's  refined  and  select  tastes  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact 
that  there  were  a  great  many  gayeties  going  on  at  that  season 
wherein  he  would  naturally  have  borne  a  part.  He  contrived 
to  accept  some  of  the  invitations,  and  gave  the  boys  at  the 
store  long,  minute,  and  brilliant  descriptions  of  these  festivi 
ties.  He  could  remember  what  every  one  of  the  girls  wore  — 
what  he  said  to  them  —  what  they  said  to  him!  He  used  to 
repeat  these  arch,  witty,  or  sentimental  conversations  at 


NATHAN    SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       229 

considerable  length  to  an  audience  of  grinning  youths.  He 
dazzled  you  with  florid  details  —  waxed  floors  —  candles  — 
mirrors  —  fancy  ices  —  satin  waistcoats  —  pumps — tulle 
and  spangles  —  two  violins,  a  harp,  and  the  piano  —  how  richly 
did  these  terms  resound  upon  the  arid  atmosphere  of  the  ware- 
room!  How  George  did  flourish  and  glitter  before  the  hum 
ble  gaze  of  Burke's  f ellow- workers !  His  table  was  piled  high 
with  cards;  he  was  besieged  with  invitations  which  he  heroic 
ally  refused.  His  mother  thought  George  was  working  him 
self  into  his  grave;  she  told  all  her  friends  about  his  noble 
unselfish  conduct.  "The  head  bookkeeper  had  to  go  home, 
you  know  —  it's  that  young  man  named  Burke  that  used  to 
be  our  chore-boy  —  of  course  you  don't  remember.  But  it 
seems  he's  living  with  Jimmie  Sharpless  now  —  eh?  My 
dear,  don't  ask  me,  I  don't  know  anything  about  them.  All 
I  know  is  that  he  and  Jim  have  struck  up  some  kind  of  a 
friendship  and  they  are  living  together  in  a  boarding-house 
somewhere  —  you  heard  about  Jim  being  so  sick,  didn't 
you?  Mercy,  yes  —  didn't  you  know  about  that  f  Why,  he 
wasn't  expected  to  live  for  a  while!  This  Burke  young  man 
wanted  to  take  care  of  him,  so  they  let  him  go,  and  then  the 
minute  George  came  home,  he  said  right  off  without  anybody 
having  to  coax  and  argue  the  way  they  would  with  most 
young  fellows:  'All  right,  father,  I'll  go  right  down  and  take 
his  place.'  Just  like  that,  you  know,  right  off.  'All  right, 
father,  I'll  go  straight  down  and  do  the  work.'  Well,  of 
course,  I  know  he's  my  own  son,  and  there's  that  old  saying 
about  every  crow  thinking  its  own  young  one  white  —  but  I 
will  say  I  think  that  was  a  lovely  thing  for  any  young  man  to 
do,  and  I'm  just  as  proud  of  George  as  I  can  be.  He's  hardly 
been  anywhere,  and  you  know  there've  been  dozens  of  par 
ties,  and  of  course  he  is  asked  to  all  of  them  —  all  the  girls  are 
after  George  the  whole  time  —  but  he  just  wouldn't  go  while 
they  were  so  short  of  help  at  the  office.  Jim  Sharpless  is 
getting  well,  they  say;  wouldn't  you  think  he'd  take  it  as  a 
lesson  and  a  warning  f  Dr.  Vardaman  said  he  was  awfully 
sick  —  poor  Jim!  I  made  some  chicken-jelly  and  sent  it 
down  to  him  this  morning  —  I  don't  care  how  bad  he  is,  I 
always  was  fond  of  Jim,  and  I  can't  help  feeling  sorry  for 
him." 

Quite  by  accident  Burke  overheard  this  speech;  and  I  do 


230  NATHAN    BURKE 

not  know  why  it  should  have  lingered  in  his  mind  to  be  re 
peated  after  all  these  years,  unless  because  the  incident  seems 
somehow  to  be  interwoven  part  and  parcel  with  one  of  the 
best-remembered  (perhaps  because  one  of  the  most  unhappy) 
times  of  his  life.  For  his  own  part,  Nathan  thanked  George 
warmly,  and  the  latter  received  the  thanks  with  a  smile  of 
faint,  kindly  superiority.  "  Don't  mention  it,  Burke.  Any 
time  you  want  help,  or  would  like  me  to  show  you  anything 
about  the  books  I'll  be  most  pleased,"  he  assured  the  other. 
And  Nat  settled  to  his  duties  with  a  mingled  amusement  and 
irritation;  and  some  shame  at  his  own  impatience  under 
George's  suavity.  " Confound  him!  Why  on  earth  will  he 
spoil  a  kind  and  generous  action  with  his  infernal  airs  ?  If  he 
has  sense  enough  for  one  thing,  he  ought  to  have  sense  enough 
for  another!"  thought  Nathan;  and  the  next  time  George 
gracefully  approached  him  for  a  small  loan  —  "pay  you  to 
morrow,  Nat,  or  Thursday  at  farthest,  if  you  could  conven 
iently  to-day?  Fact  is,  I'm  hard  up  this  month  —  Christ 
mas  presents,  you  know  —  and  then,  hang  it,  a  fellow  has  to 
get  out  with  the  boys  once  in  a  while,  hey?"  -I  say,  when 
this  happened,  Nathan  supplied  him  freely,  wondering  the 
while  at  his  own  eagerness  to  stand  even  with  George.  "I 
suppose  it's  a  streak  of  meanness  in  me,"  he  said  to  himself 
with  a  doubtful  smile.  He  would  have  lent  Jim  Sharpless 
every  penny  he  owned  in  the  world,  or  borrowed  all  of  Jim's 
with  no  such  uneasiness.  Already  they  were  beholden  one 
to  the  other  for  a  hundred  kindnesses  of  which  neither  ever 
thought  to  take  account.  Why  should  the  idea  of  owing 
George  Ducey  a  favor  be  so  unbearable?  Burke  did  not  dis 
like  him  —  no  one  could  actively  dislike  George  —  but  the 
boy  wearied  him  ineffably  with  his  etiquette-manual  manners, 
his  trivial  deceptions,  his  flat,  feeble,  pompous  chatter.  A 
grown  man  to  be  gabbling  about  ball-room  decorations  and 
women's  clothes!  Before  the  holidays  were  well  over,  he 
ceased  to  be  entertaining  even  to  the  young  clerks;  they 
tired  of  those  stories  whereof  George  was  eternally  the  hero, 
they  laughed  no  more  at  his  ribbon-and-lace  conquests; 
they  welcomed  the  announcement  that  he  was  to  enter  upon 
the  career  of  medicine  with  humorous  relief  and  with  more 
than  one  quaint  and  pointed  comment.  Nathan  asked  Dr. 
Vardaman  if  it  was  true  that  George  was  to  study  in  his 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       231 

office,  and  to  his  amazement  the  doctor  confirmed  it,  although 
with  an  extremely  odd  and  unreadable  expression. 

It  was  at  about  this  time  that  Burke  was  again  called  to 
the  front  of  the  store  one  day  to  see  a  lady  —  "  Gettin'  to  be 
kinder  popular  with  'em,  ain't  you,  Nat?  Runnin'  after 
you  the  way  they  do  after  Bay-Rum  Pettie,  ain't  they?" 
observed  the  bearer  of  the  summons,  flippantly  —  Bay-Rum 
Pettie  being  the  title  which  these  profane  underlings  had  be 
stowed  on  the  heir  of  the  establishment  behind  his  back. 
"It's  Miss  Blake  this  time,"  he  added  in  explanation;  and 
Nathan,  who  for  a  moment  had  harbored  the  insane  hope 
that  it  might  be  Miss  Somebody-Else  who  had  the  most 
beautiful  black  hair  and  gray  eyes  in  the  universe  and  more 
over  played  the  piano  like  Saint  Cecilia,  went  to  meet  her 
unreasonably  disappointed.  It  was  a  snapping  cold  winter 
day  with  snow  and  brilliant  fringes  of  icicles.  Outside  he 
saw  a  sleigh  running  over  with  furs,  lap-robes,  pretty  bright- 
cheeked  girls,  from  which  Francie  had  descended.  She  stood 
just  within  the  door,  wrapped  up  shapelessly  in  a  furred  cloak 

—  it  was  Mrs.  Ducey's,  lined  with  the  squirrel  fur  —  out  of 
which  emerged  her  round  face  very  fresh,  rosy,  and  sparkling 
in  a  frame  of  blown,  brown  curls.     Between  her  hands,  which 
had  a  look  in  loose  mittens  of  being  the  paws  of  some  charm 
ing  little  animal,  she  was  carefully  supporting  something  done 
up  in  immaculate  white  with  a  square  of  note-paper  addressed 
in  Mrs.  Ducey's  slim,  correct,  Italian  handwriting  on  top. 
She  held  it  out  to  Nat  with  a  shy  gesture,  rather  confused  and 
declining  the  shabby  chair  one  of  the  young  fellows  was  offer 
ing  her,  among  the  boxes  and  kegs.     He  retreated  with  a 
glance  which  Mr.  Burke  considered  by  far  too  frankly  ad 
miring. 

"Nathan,  Aunt  Anne  sent  this  down,  and  she  says  will  you 
take  it  to  Mr.  Sharpless  —  she's  written  a  note  to  his  mother 

—  she  says  you're  to  be  sure  and  not  lose  it,"  said  Francie, 
answering  Nat's  grin  at  this  characteristic  caution  with  a  dim 
ple  flashing  into  view  at  the  corner  of  her  mouth,  and  dis 
appearing  again  by  magic  as  she  went  on  soberly:   "it's  some 
jelly  she's  made  for  him,  and  none  of  us  knew  where  he  lived, 
so  she  says  you're  to  take  it  to  him.     And  how  is  he?  " 

"He's  getting  on  very  well,"  said  Nat,  accepting  the  china 
bowl  and  napkin  gingerly.  "He  can  sit  up  several  hours  a 


232  NATHAN   BURKE 

day  now,  and  he'll  be  able  to  write  and  thank  Mrs.  Ducey,  I 
think.  It's  very  kind  of  her." 

"It  wasn't  any  trouble,"  said  Francie,  about  to  depart, 
"and  —  oh,  Nathan,  I  nearly  forgot,  Aunt  Anne  says  you're 
not  to  bother  about  the  things,  they're  old  and  you  don't 
need  to  send  them  back." 

"The  things?"  repeated  Burke,  uncomprehendingly. 
"What  things?" 

"Why,  the  bowl,  you  know  —  it's  cracked,  and  the  napkin 
is  one  out  of  an  old  worn-out  set,  that  set  with  the  rain-drop 
pattern,  don't  you  remember?"  Francie  explained,  evidently 
marvelling  at  this  masculine  stupidity.  "Aunt  Anne  picked 
them  out  purposely  so  you  could  just  throw  them  away  with 
out  any  bother  about  returning  them." 

"Why,  I'd  just  as  lief,"  said  Nathan,  eying  respectfully 
the  napkin  which  was  beautifully  white  and  clean  and  ap 
peared  to  him  a  handsome  piece  of  table-furniture  in  spite  of 
a  hole  here  and  there  —  they  had  little  squares  of  the  red 
tablecloth  for  napkins  at  Mrs.  Slaney's  and  frequently  went 
without  altogether.  "It's  very  nice,  isn't  it?  I'll  bring  it 
up.  I  wanted  to  come  up  and  —  and  see  how  Nance  is 
anyhow — I  meant  to  long  ago,"  he  added  in  the  defen 
sively  apologetic  tone  he  had  come  to  adopt  whenever  he 
referred  to  her,  "only  Jim's  been  so  sick  - 

Francie  looked  at  him  startled.  "Why,  Nathan  —  why, 
didn't  you  know  —  ?" 

"Know  what?" 

"Why,  Nance  isn't  —  she  isn't  at  the  house  —  she  isn't 
with  Aunt  Anne  any  more  —  didn't  you  know  —  ?"  There 
was  an  indefinable  alarm  in  her  voice ;  her  eyes  widened  and 
darkened  after  a  curious  fashion  they  had  whenever  the  child 
was  frightened  or  apprehensive.  Burke  noted  it  absently; 
he  was  not  surprised  to  hear  of  Nance's  departure.  In  na 
ture  she  couldn't  stand  it  much  longer,  he  had  often  told 
himself,  and  his  first  feeling  was  akin  to  relief.  The  experi 
ment  was  bound  to  end  uncomfortably,  but  at  last  it  was 
ended. 

"Where  did  she  go?  Back  to  the  country?  It's  odd  she 
didn't  come  and  tell  me,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  Nathan,  didn't  you  know?"  Francie  reiterated  in  a 
voice  of  miserable  consternation,  "she  —  she  went  away 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       233 

because  she  —  she  had  to  go  —  she  took  something  of  Aunt 
Anne's  —  at  least  Aunt  Anne  —  Aunt  Anne  thought  she 
did — "  Francie  interrupted  herself  eagerly.  "Aunt  Anne 
says  she  knows  —  oh,  Nathan,  I'm  so  sorry!"  Indeed  she 
looked  so;  her  eyes  filled;  dread  and  anxiety  together 
clouded  her  face  as  she  met  the  young  man's  gaze.  "I  don't 
know  why,  but  we  thought  of  course  you  knew  about  it.  We 
thought  George  or  some  one  would  have  told  you." 

"Took  something?  Took  something  of  your  aunt's? 
You  mean  she  stole  it  ?  "  said  Burke,  with  dry  lips. 

"  Yes.  That  is,  Aunt  Anne  is  sure  she  did  —  "  said  the  girl, 
hesitating  in  her  honesty  and  sympathy;  and  visibly  almost 
as  much  distressed  as  if  she  herself  had  been  accused  of  theft. 
"Oh,  Nathan,  it  hurts  me  to  be  the  one  to  have  to  tell  you! 
It  was  that  brooch,  you  know.  Aunt  Anne's  had  it  for  ever 
so  long,  she's  so  fond  of  it.  Don't  you  remember,  it  was 
heart-shaped,  an  opal  with  diamonds  around  it?  Uncle 
Will  gave  it  to  her  —  I  think  it  was  when  you  first  came  — 
it  was  that  long  ago,  wasn't  it,  Uncle  Will?  The  brooch  that 
Nance  st —  that  Aunt  Anne  says  she  st —  that  Aunt  Anne 
missed  the  other  day,  you  know?"  She  appealed  to  Mr. 
Ducey,  who  had  come  up  and  stood  by,  fidgeting  a  little. 
There  was  an  abrupt  silence.  One  or  two  of  the  boys,  some 
how  scenting  trouble,  lingered  near,  alert  and  listening. 
Burke,  who  had  been  holding  the  bowl  all  this  while  between 
his  two  hands,  set  it  down  on  the  head  of  a  barrel  beside 
him,  with  a  kind  of  mechanical  and  painful  deliberation  as  if 
it  had  been  of  extreme  value.  He  swallowed  before  he 
spoke,  his  voice  sounding  strange  in  his  own  ears. 

"When  did  this  happen?"  he  said. 

"Several  weeks  ago  —  month  maybe  —  really  I  don't 
quite  recollect  when,"  Ducey  said,  rather  irritably  and  un 
easily,  pulling  his  watch  out  of  his  pocket,  and  snapping  the 
cover  open  and  glancing  at  it  and  putting  it  back  two  or  three 
times  over  with  the  air  of  haste  and  preoccupation  habitual 
with  him  during  business  hours  and  at  the  store.  "Haven't 
seen  anything  of  Wilson,  have  you,  Burke  ?  I'm  looking  for 
him  this  morning  to  close  up  that  deal  —  let's  see,  I  hope  my 
memorandum  agrees  with  yours  in  the  books  — "  said  Wil 
liam,  who  was  always  fussing  about  with  notes  and  slips  and 
references  —  "five  hogsheads  Demerara  sugar,  and  that 


234  NATHAN    BURKE 

lard,  you  know,  let's  see  —  um  —  er  —  too  bad  about  the 
Darnell  girl  —  ah  —  um—  "  he  walked  away  nervously,  and 
we  heard  old  Marsh's  heavy  voice  raucously  delivering  some 
command  in  the  office  in  the  rear. 

"It  was  the  beginning  of  December  —  before  the  holi 
days  —  before  George  came  home,"  Francie  said,  faltering; 
"it  was  just  after  Aunt  Anne  was  so  sick  —  she  —  she  says 
that's  when  Nance  —  when  it  happened." 

"You  mean  Nance  took  it  and  went  off  with  it  ?" 

"No,  oh,  no.  She  didn't  go  till  afterwards  —  till  Aunt 
Anne  found  out  - 

"Mrs.  Ducey  saw  her  take  it?  Or  found  it  on  her?" 
Burke  asked. 

"No,  no.  She  says  she  knows  Nance  took  it,  though,  be 
cause  —  because  she  —  "  Francie  hesitated  again;  she  loved 
her  aunt,  and  with  Francie  love  and  loyalty  were  one  stuff 
and  that  a  stout  sort,  innocent  of  shades  or  varieties.  Yet 
something  in  the  young  man's  face  moved  her  to  add  almost 
pleadingly  in  a  lowered  voice :  "Nathan,  you  know  how  Aunt 
Anne  is.  She's  just  as  sure.  Nance  said  she  didn't  take  it  - 
and  —  and  I  believed  her.  I  don't  think  she  would  steal 
anything.  But  you  know  how  Aunt  Anne  is  !" 

"Nance  left  the  house  then?  Where  did  she  go?"  said 
Burke,  harshly. 

"Nathan,  I  don't  know.  She  got  a  place  somewhere  — 
Aunt  Anne  heard  —  but  she  isn't  there  any  more  — 

She  shrank  a  little  before  his  hard  eyes,  all  the  color  quite 
gone  out  of  her  sweet,  earnest  face.  I  daresay  this  Nathan 
was  a  new  man  to  Francie,  a  forbidding  stranger.  She  was  a 
devoutly  obedient  nature,  gentle-tempered,  trusting,  wholly 
ignorant  of  the  world,  and  it  may  be  that  she  now  perceived 
for  the  first  time  at  one  stroke,  in  all  its  ugliness,  what  this 
thing  was  that  had  happened,  and  glimpsed  unexpected 
depths  of  tragedy.  She  clasped  her  two  small  mittens  to 
gether  in  a  pitiful  gesture.  "Oh,  Nathan,  I'm  so  sorry,  so 
sorry!  Aunt  Anne  —  I  wish  you  could  see  Aunt  Anne  — " 

"I  will,"  said  Nat,  sombrely. 

The  girls  were  challenging  her  gayly  from  the  sleigh;  and 
when  she  went  out  to  join  them,  there  was  a  gust  of  laughter 
and  questions  and  pretty  little  outcries.  The  young  women 
doubtless  wondered  much  at  Francie's  grave  face,  and  were 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       235 

profoundly  amused  at  the  stiff,  silent  young  man  who  came 
out  with  her  and  helped  her  to  her  seat  without  a  word. 

The  Ducey  house  was  pleasantly  lit  as  Nathan  went  up 
the  brick  walk  that  evening.  Bright  shafts  of  light  streamed 
through  the  windows,  where  the  Christmas  wreaths  of  holly 
still  hung  against  the  panes  —  peace  on  earth,  good-will  to 
men,  Burke  thought  with  a  fierce  irony,  noting  these  symbols. 
He  was  too  ill  at  ease  with  his  own  conscience,  too  racked  by 
bootless  regrets  to  spare  a  little  charity  to  others.  Why  had 
he  ever  lost  sight  of  Nance?  He  could  not  have  kept  this 
from  happening,  perhaps  —  he  recalled  with  a  bitter  humor 
the  hosts  of  outraged  servant-girls  whom  he  had  witnessed 
in  the  old  days,  declaiming,  protesting,  bewailing  their 
unjust  lot  in  Mrs.  Ducey 's  kitchen.  No,  he  could  not  have 
prevented  it  —  but  he  might  have  tried  to  keep  in  closer 
touch  with  Nance;  if  she  could  have  relied  on  his  faith  and 
friendship,  she  might  have  come  to  him,  told  him,  asked  his 
help.  In  God's  name,  thought  the  young  man  desperately, 
why  didn't  she  come  anyhow  ?  She  could  not  have  sup 
posed  for  an  instant  that  he  would  believe  this  wretched 
charge  ?  Where  was  she  ?  What  had  become  of  her  ?  He 
had  spent  the  afternoon  in  fruitless  search.  It  was  more 
than  a  month  —  but  the  town  was  a  small  place  after  all  — 
she  must  be  somewhere  in  it.  He  might  have  thought  — 
he  would  have  been  very  glad  to  think  —  that  she  had  gone 
back  to  her  old  home,  to  the  cabin  on  the  Scioto;  but,  as 
luck  would  have  it,  he  had  fallen  in,  during  his  inquiry,  with 
'Liph  Williams,  come  in  town  for  the  day's  trading;  and 
"  How's  Nance  ?  Seen  her  lately  ?  "  asked  the  farmer,  cheer 
fully,  among  his  greetings.  "  No.  Have  you  ?  "  Nat  said  with 
a  pang  of  apprehension.  'Liph  thought  he  was  joking  and 
poked  him  in  the  side  with  grins  and  winks.  "Ho,  ho, 
smarty!  Me  see  her,  hey?  It's  just  like  my  woman  says, 
Nance'll  never  come  back  to  th'  country,  no  more'n  you  ever 
will,  Nat.  Town's  th'  place  young  folks  likes.  Does  Nance 
like  it  up  to  Ducey 's,  though  ?  Joe  didn't  much  —  Joe,  he 
quit,  ye  know.  He  'lowed  Nance  would,  too,  after  a  spell. 
Say,  you  tell  Nance  we'd  be  right  down  glad  to  see  her  any 
time  she  feels  like  comin'  out.  Ye  might  bring  her  some  day 
yerself,  Nat,  if  both  of  ye  could  git  a  day  off." 


236  NATHAN    BURKE 

Shame  tied  the  other's  tongue,  forbade  explanations.  He 
could  not  tell  Williams  the  miserable  truth.  Time  enough 
for  that  when  he  himself  should  have  found  out  something 
definite  about  the  poor  girl,  he  thought,  shrinking.  He 
would  not  let  'Liph  carry  this  sorry  tale  out  to  the  back 
woods.  If  Nance  herself  would  not  go  there  with  her  trouble, 
was  it  for  him  to  send  it  ahead  of  her  ?  He  recoiled  from  the 
thought  of  her  name  loaded  with  this  accusation  passed  from 
tongue  to  tongue  out  there  in  her  old  haunts,  among  the  men 
and  women  who  had  seen  her  grow  up.  They  liked  her, 
doubtless  some  of  them  would  believe  in  her  and  champion 
her;  but  she  was  Jake  Darnell's  daughter,  and  Nat  knew  the 
world  well  enough  to  know  how  ill  that  relationship  would 
stead  her,  even  among  people  who  were  no  whit  better 
themselves.  Gossip  is  everywhere  ready  to  announce  the 
solid  truth  that  figs  do  not  grow  on  thistles,  and  will  be  as 
brisk,  as  sharp,  and  as  short-sighted  in  the  fields  as  on  the 
sidewalk. 

There  was  music  in  the  parlor  and  company.  The  young 
men,  all  of  whom  knew  Burke,  and  nodded,  staring  a  little, 
were  carrying  chairs  out  into  the  hall  and  pushing  the 
furniture  back  in  preparation  for  dancing.  Nat  was  ushered 
into  the  dining-room  where  the  folding-doors  were  drawn  to, 
and  the  table  set  with  piles  of  plates  and  sandwiches  and  cake 
in  Mrs.  Ducey's  handsome  silver  cake-baskets,  and  cut-glass 
saucers  of  sweets.  He  knew  the  room  well.  There  was  a 
mirror  over  the  mantel-shelf  and  a  French  clock  of  bronze 
with  a  figure  of  Galileo  seated  upon  the  flat  summit  of  it, 
and  bronze  candelabra  flanking  it  at  either  end,  between 
which  ornaments  Burke  caught  sight  of  his  own  grim  and 
pallid  features  as  he  waited.  He  could  hear  Mrs.  Ducey's 
sweet,  decided  voice  on  the  other  side  of  the  closed  doors : 
"  George  said  right  off  -  "  Well,  of  course,  I  know  I'm  his 
mother,  but  I  do  think  that  was  a  lovely  thing  for  any  young 
man  to  do  —  "  and  an  appreciative  murmur  from  the  listener. 
We  have  heard  her  already,  haven't  we  ?  In  a  moment  she 
came  rustling  in  with  her  quick  unerring  step,  about  which 
there  was  a  kind  of  peremptory  lightness.  She  was  dressed 
for  the  evening  in  bright  silks  and  laces;  her  lovely  fair  face 
bloomed  above  her  finery.  "  Well,  Nathan,  how  do  you  do  ? 
I  haven't  seen  anything  of  you  for  a  long  while.  It's  cold, 


NATHAN   SHUTS  THE   STABLE   DOOR       237 

isn't  it?  Come  close  by  the  fire,  you  must  be  almost 
frozen." 

"I  came  up  to  ask  about  Nance  Darnell,  Mrs.  Ducey," 
said  Burke,  without  preamble. 

"Yes,  I  know.  Francie  told  me.  Wasn't;  it  a  pity?" 
She  turned  towards  him  with  an  expression  of  genuine  dis 
tress  and  trouble.  "Oh,  Nathan,  I've  often  thought  of  it 
since  I  found  her  out,  you  were  right  when  you  warned  me 
not  to  take  Nance  in  the  house.  You  knew  her  better  than  I 
did  —  you  remember  you  told  me  so,  but  I  just  wouldn't 
listen,  when  you  cautioned  me  against  her.  You  see  — 

"  I  ?  I  warned  you  against  Nance  ?  "  said  Nat,  in  a  ghastly 
bewilderment. 

"Yes,  don't  you  remember?  Why,  surely  you  remember 
coming  up  here  and  telling  me  over  and  over  again  that  you 
thought  I'd  better  not  take  her,  because  I  didn't  know  any 
thing  about  her  and  you  did.  The  trouble  was  I  didn't  at 
all  realize  what  you  meant,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  in  almost  an 
apologetic  tone,  "I  didn't  understand,  and  I  did  so  want  to 
do  something  for  her  as  long  as  it  sort  of  seemed  as  if  we  had 
been  mixed  up  in  her  father's  death."  She  looked  at  the 
young  man  with  a  real  appeal  for  sympathy.  "Isn't  it 
dreadful  how  Nance  has  turned  out  after  all  I  did  for  her  ?  I 
suppose  you  thought  I  was  very  headstrong,  but  you  really 
didn't  speak  plain  enough,  Nathan;  it  would  have  been  the 
better  kindness." 

"I  don't  think  you  understand  now,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  said 
Burke,  appalled  with  a  sudden  sense  of  the  futility  of  argu 
ment.  By  what  feminine  process  of  reason  or  imagination 
she  had  so  distorted  his  own  words  and  actions,  he  could  not 
even  guess,  but  it  erected  a  wall  of  adamant  between  them  on 
the  instant,  strengthened  by  Mrs.  Ducey's  own  absolute 
honesty  and  sincerity.  For  a  flash  there  seemed  to  him  a 
kind  of  exasperating  dulness  about  it  —  yet  he  knew  Mrs. 
Ducey  to  be  anything  but  a  dull  woman.  "I  don't  think 
you  understand,"  he  repeated  painstakingly;  "I  never  meant 
to  warn  you  against  Nance.  I  don't  know  what  I  could 
have  said  that  could  have  given  you  the  idea  — 

"Why,  Nathan,  it's  not  possible  you  don't  remember  ?" 
exclaimed  Mrs.  Ducey,  amazed;  "you  came  and  told  me 
yourself  she  wasn't  fit  to  take  in  the  house  —  why,  you  said 


238  NATHAN   BURKE 

so  —  don't  you  remember  f "  She  looked  at  him  helplessly 
questioning.  "What  did  you  say  if  you  didn't  say  that,  I'd 
like  to  know?" 

"I  don't  remember  what  I  said  exactly,  Mrs.  Ducey," 
said  Burke,  despairingly;  "but  I  must  have  put  it  very  badly, 
for  warning  you  against  Nance  was  the  last  thing  in  the  world 
I  should  have  thought  of.  I  want  you  to  believe  that.  I 
had  no  idea  of  such  a  thing." 

"Hm!  Well,  I  certainly  took  it  that  way  when  I  came  to 
think  it  over  the  other  day  when  I  found  out  that  she  had 
stolen  my  brooch,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey;  "but  anyhow  there's 
no  use  in  talking  about  that  now.  Whatever  you  meant  to 
say  — and  I'm  sure  I  can't  imagine  what  you  did  mean  if  not 
that  —  there's  no  use  now.  You  mustn't  think  I  am  suspect 
ing  you  of  knowing  anything  about  it,  Nathan,"  she  added 
quickly  and  with  the  utmost  kindness;  "I  see  you  were  as 
much  deceived  in  Nance  as  I  was  —  it's  so  easy  for  any  girl 
to  pull  the  wool  over  a  young  man's  eyes.  Why,  I  wouldn't 
dream  of  suspecting  you.  Don't  worry  about  that." 

"Yes,  I've  lived  here  on  the  place,  and  in  the  office  several 
years  and  never  stolen  anything,  though  I've  had  many  op 
portunities,  so  I  suppose  my  honesty  is  fairly  well  estab 
lished,"  said  Nat,  in  savage  sarcasm. 

"Yes.  Of  course.  Whatever  I  am,  I  always  try  to  be  just 
and  reasonable, "said  Mrs.  Ducey.  "We  all  make  mistakes,  I 
suppose,"  she  went  on  gravely;  "I  made  one  about  Nance. 
But  you're  not  to  blame,  Nathan;  I'm  sure  you  meant  well. 
If  you  had  just  told  me  flat  you  were  afraid  she  couldn't  be 
trusted,  it  would  have  been  so  much  better;  but  I  suppose 
you  weren't  quite  sure,  and  it's  wrong  to  say  things  like  that 
unless  one  is  absolutely  sure.  I  understand  just  how  you 
feel."  She  cast  a  glance  of  housewifely  concern  over  the 
table.  "Wouldn't  you  like  a  doughnut  or  something  ?" 

Burke  declined,  conscious  of  a  bitter  comedy  in  the  scene. 
"Would  you  mind  telling  me  —  you  know  I  only  heard  about 
it  to-day  —  how  you  came  to  suspect  —  that  is,  what  made 
you  think  Nance  had  taken  your  breastpin  ?  How  it  all  hap 
pened,  I  mean?"  he  amended  hurriedly,  seeing  Mrs.  Ducey 
stiffen  at  something  in  the  wording  or  manner  of  this  inquiry. 

"There  was  no  thinking  or  suspecting  at  all  about  it,  Na 
than,"  she  said  with  dignity.  "I  hope  you  don't  believe  I 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       239 

would  accuse  a  person  on  mere  suspicion,  or  because  I  just 
thought  they  had  stolen  something.  Of  course,  I  can't  prove 
it  —  no  one  can  ever  prove  anything  of  this  kind,  because  that 
sort  of  thief  is  always  too  smart  ever  to  have  it  proved  on 
them  —  I  simply  know.  I  know  just  as  certainly  as  if  I  had 
seen  Nance  take  it  with  my  own  eyes  —  anybody  would 
know.  It  happened  while  I  was  sick,  you  know.  I  thought 
it  was  kind  of  queer  how  Nance  insisted  on  being  in  the  room 
with  me,  and  waiting  on  me  all  the  time,  and  not  letting  any 
one  come  near  me;  and  she  kept  the  room  so  dark,  you  know, 
and  moved  around  like  a  cat  without  the  least  noise  —  well, 
of  course  when  I'm  sick  I  don't  like  light  and  noise  and  a  lot 
of  people  around  me,  so  that  I  never  suspected  at  the  time 
what  she  was  up  to  —  and  besides  I  was  too  sick  to  notice 
much.  I  had  my  brooch  put  away  —  it  was  that  opal  set  in 
diamonds  —  you  must  have  seen  me  wear  it  —  I  was  so  fond 
of  it  —  ''  said  Mrs.  Duc.ey,  pathetically,  her  pretty  eyes 
brimming.  "  Will  —  Mr.  Ducey  gave  it  to  me  long  ago  - 
I'd  rather  she  had  taken  almost  anything  than  that.  That's 
what  I  told  her  —  it  was  so  heartless  — 

" You  —  you  caught  her  with  it?"  said  Burke. 

"No  —  oh,  mercy,  no!  How  innocent  men  are  where  a 
young  woman  is  concerned!"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  pityingly; 
"as  if  she  would  have  let  me  catch  her  with  it!  She  was  a 
great  deal  too  sharp  for  that !  I  ought  to  have  been  more 
careful,  I  suppose,  but  I  never  thought.  I  remember  now 
she  always  looked  at  it  so  admiringly  whenever  I  put  it  on, 
and  once  she  said  to  me:  'That's  a  lovely  piece  of  jewelry, 
it  just  suits  you.  What  is  the  name  of  that  stone?'  So  I 
told  her  it  was  an  opal.  Then  she  wanted  to  know  where  it 
came  from  and  all  about  it  —  and,  Nathan,  I  was  so  un 
suspicious  it  never  entered  my  head  that  she  was  trying  to 
find  out  whether  it  was  worth  anything!  She  didn't  ask  a 
word  about  the  diamonds,  because  she  knew  how  costly  they 
were,  don't  you  see  ?  That  just  shows !  Only  after  I  had  told 
her  all  I  knew  about  opals,  I  said  just  for  curiosity,  you  know, 
without  thinking  anything,  because  she  did  say  such  funny 
things  sometimes,  it  amused  me  so:  'What  did  you  want 
to  know  for,  Nance?'  And  she  colored  up  and  said  just 
as  confused  and  hesitating  as  could  be,  l  They  make  me  think 
of  snow  in  a  hollow  with  the  sun  kind  of  red  on  it,  winter 


240  NATHAN   BURKE 

evenings/  Now  did  you  ever  hear  such  a  rigmarole  as  that  ? 
Of  course  she  had  to  think  up  some  kind  of  explanation  right 
away,  and  that  was  the  best  she  could  do  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment.  I  ought  to  have  been  on  my  guard,  only  I  never 
thought  at  the  time.  But  you  see  how  plain  it  all  is,"  said 
Mrs.  Ducey,  pausing  for  breath. 

"I  see/'  said  Burke,  heavily.  He  sat  listening  with  folded 
arms  and  head  on  his  chest.  Good  God,  poor  Nance,  with 
her  awkward  tongue,  her  vague,  wild,  shy  fancies! 

"Well,  I  put  away  my  brooch  in  the  same  place  I  always 
do,  just  the  night  before  I  was  taken  sick  —  before  I  had  to 
go  to  bed,  I  mean.  I  was  feeling  miserable  for  two  or  three 
days  before  that,  but  I  never  give  up  till  the  last  minute.  I 
generally  lock  up  my  things,  and  I'm  sure  I  did  that  night, 
but  Nance  came  in  and  insisted  on  making  me  a  hot  lemonade 
and  fixing  a  foot-bath,  and  she  helped  me  undress,  and  of 
course  she  kept  her  eyes  open  all  the  time  —  it  must  all  have 
been  part  of  her  plan  —  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  she'd  been 
waiting  days  for  a  chance  — 

"She  could  hardly  have  calculated  on  your  sickness  or 
timed  her  actions  so  accurately,  could  she?"  Nathan  could 
not  refrain  from  suggesting. 

"Oh,  my,  people  like  that  are  just  as  sharp  as  nails  — 
you've  no  idea !  They  have  all  kinds  of  ways  of  doing  that 
honest  persons  would  never  think  of,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  with 
conviction.  "Of  course  I  don't  know  when  Nance  took 
it  —  I  don't  believe  she  took  it  that  night.  But  she  knew 
where  it  was  and  all  she  had  to  do  was  to  bide  her  time  — 

"Did  nobody  else  in  the  house  know  where  it  was?" 
Burke  asked. 

Mrs.  Ducey  stared.  "Why,  you  don't  suppose  Mr. 
Ducey  or  Francie  would  have  taken  it,  Nathan  ?  It  was  long 
before  George  came  home  —  well,  of  all  the  absurd  — 

"I  mean  the  other  servants." 

"Oh,  the  other  servants  don't  count.  I  only  had  a  woman 
coming  in  by  the  day  at  the  time  to  wash  and  iron  and  do  the 
cleaning,  and  she  always  went  home  at  night.  And  anyway, 
I  always  hide  my  jewelry  carefully  so  that  a  strange  person 
coming  in  couldn't  possibly  find  it.  No,  it's  no  use,  Nathan," 
said  Mrs.  Ducey,  shaking  her  head  regretfully;  "I  thought  of 
all  those  things  the  same  as  you  are  doing  when  I  got  up  after 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR       241 

I  got  well,  and  found  my  brooch  was  gone,  and  it  was  per 
fectly  plain  that  Nance  was  the  one  who  had  taken  it.  I  felt 
terribly,  Nathan;  I  hated  to  think  that  anybody  could  be  so 
ungrateful  and  unprincipled." 

"Well,  then,  you  accused  her  of  it?" 

"No,  I  didn't  accuse  her,  Nathan.  I  tried  to  be  kind.  I 
just  called  her  into  my  room,  and  told  her  what  had  hap 
pened,  that  I  couldn't  find  my  brooch  anywhere,  and  I  was 
sorry  but  I  knew  some  one  must  have  stolen  it,  and  I  was 
afraid  I  knew  the  person.  And  then  I  stopped  and  waited 
to  see  what  she  would  say  and  give  her  a  chance  to  clear  her 
self.  I  just  sat  quietly  and  waited  — 

"And  she  said  nothing,  I  suppose?"  said  Nat.  He  got 
up  out  of  his  chair  and  walked  the  room  restlessly  in  unavail 
ing  pity. 

"Why,  that's  just  what  she  did  —  said  nothing,  I  mean," 
ejaculated  Mrs.  Ducey,  in  surprise;  "but  how  did  you  guess?  " 

"It's  —  it's  the  way  people  act  sometimes,"  said  Burke, 
huskily. 

"She  just  stood  there  like  a  statue.  And  then  I  said  to 
her  just  as  gently  and  kindly  as  I  could,  because  I  didn't  want 
to  make  it  any  harder  for  her  than  I  could  help :  l  Nance, ' 
I  said, '  don't  be  frightened.  Tell  me  the  truth.  I  won't  let 
any  one  hurt  you,  and  nobody  shall  ever  know  about  it  but 
myself.  I  know  you  were  overcome  by  a  sudden  temptation 
when  you  took  my  brooch,  but  you  are  a  very  young  girl,  and 
young  girls  love  pretty  things,  and  I'm  not  going  to  blame 
you.  I  just  feel  sorry  for  you.  Now  you  bring  the  brooch 
back  to  me,  and  I  promise  you  I'll  never  say  a  word  about  it 
to  any  one.'  I  don't  see  how  I  could  have  been  kinder  than 
that,  do  you?" 

"It  might  have  been  kinder  to  have  made  sure  she  took  it 
first,  I  think,"  groaned  the  young  man,  hopelessly. 

"Why,  Nathan,  I  was  perfectly  sure.  I  don't  believe 
you've  been  listening.  The  whole  thing  is  as  plain  as  A  B  C. 
Goodness,  don't  you  suppose  I'd  have  been  glad  and  happy 
to  think  that  I'd  lost  it  some  way,  or  that  some  one  else  had 
stolen  it?"  cried  out  Mrs.  Ducey,  her  lips  trembling.  "It 
was  perfectly  awful  —  the  most  awful  thing  I  ever  had  to  go 
through  with.  And  to  find  her  so  hardened  — " 

"What  did  she  say  or  do?" 


242  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Why,  she  just  kept  as  still  and  quiet  as  a  stone  —  per 
fectly  barefaced  and  callous,  staring  at  me  while  I  was  talk 
ing.  And  then  all  at  once  she  burst  out  laughing  —  did  you 
ever  hear  of  anything  so  horrible?" 

"And  then  what?"  said  Burke,  setting  his  lips. 

1  i  Well,  you  know  Francie  was  in  the  room  and  Francie  would 
interfere  —  I  couldn't  stop  her.  She  ran  up  to  Nance  and 
took  hold  of  her  hands  and  began  to  cry  and  say  she  knew 
Nance  hadn't  taken  it,  and  she  kept  saying:  'Say  some 
thing,  Nance,  say  you  didn't  do  it;  you  know  you  didn't  do  it!" 
until  she  got  quite  hysterical  and  I  had  to  make  her  go  out 
of  the  room.  It  was  awful,  the  whole  thing.  So  then  I  tried 
and  tried  to  make  Nance  give  it  back,  but  she  simply  wouldn't. 
Just  said  once  or  twice  in  a  sullen  way  that  she  never  had  had 
it,  even  when  I  told  her  how  lenient  I  was  being  with  her,  and 
how  some  people  wouldn't  hesitate  to  send  her  to  jail." 

"After  that  you  sent  her  away,  I  suppose?" 

"No,  I  didn't!"  Mrs  Ducey  exclaimed,  flushing  with  in 
dignation  and  drawing  herself  up.  "I  don't  know  what  to 
make  of  you,  Nathan;  you  seem  to  think  I'd  be  positively 
cruel.  I  wouldn't  do  a  thing  like  that.  She  went  herself. 
If  she  had  stayed,  I'd  have  kept  on,  and  showed  her  how 
wrong  she  was,  and  persuaded  her  into  giving  the  brooch  up 

—  unless  she'd  pawned  it  or  something,  and  even  then  we 
could  have  got  the  ticket  and  got  it  back.     But  you  see  she 
was  afraid  to  stay  —  that  shows  she  was  guilty;  if  she'd  been 
innocent,  she  wouldn't  have  cared.     But  she  went  right  off 
that  very  day,  an  hour  or  so  afterwards." 

"You  don't  know  where  she  went?" 

"Oh,  yes.  We  heard  in  a  day  or  two  that  she  had  an 
swered  an  advertisement  of  a  friend  of  mine  —  Mrs.  David 
Gwynne  —  you  know,  you've  seen  her — ?" 

Nathan  nodded,  pausing  in  his  stride  about  the  room. 

"It  seems  she  had  been  wanting  a  housemaid,  and  she 
recognized  Nance  at  once,  and  never  asked  any  questions; 
just  took  it  for  granted,  she  said,  that  Nance  had  had  some 
fuss  with  me  and  took  her  right  in.  She  said  to  me :  '  You 
know,  Anne,  you're  always  fussing  with  your  servants!' 
Marian  Gwynne  is  so  queer—  "  added  Mrs.  Ducey,  in  paren 
thesis  —  "just  as  queer  as  if  she  were  really  a  Gwynne  herself 

—  they're  all  queer,  you  know  — " 


NATHAN   SHUTS   THE   STABLE   DOOR        243 

"Is  Nance  there  now?"  asked  Nathan,  with  reviving  hope. 

Mrs.  Ducey  looked  shocked.  "Why,  no,  of  course  not.  I 
couldn't  leave  Mrs.  Gwynne  in  ignorance,  you  know  —  my 
own  friend!  If  it  had  been  somebody  I  didn't  know,  it  would 
have  been  different  —  but  my  own  friend!  Why,  I  just  had 
to  tell  her.  I  sat  down  and  wrote  a  note  and  warned  her  the 
minute  I  heard  Nance  was  in  the  house." 

Burke  stood  dumb  before  this  exposition  of  the  feminine 
code.  "  Then  Mrs.  Gwynne  sent  her  off,  I've  no  doubt  ?  " 
he  inquired. 

"Oh,  gracious,  yes!  You  know  the  Governor's  house  is 
full  of  elegant  things,  and  then  Louise  —  that's  her  daughter 
—  is  going  to  be  married,  and  of  course  she  has  the  greatest 
quantity  of  clothes  and  wedding-presents.  Marian  said  it 
was  too  much  of  a  risk;  she'd  rather  have  the  inconvenience 
of  being  without  an  upstairs-girl." 

"Have  you  any  idea  where  Nance  went  from  there?  Or 
would  Mrs.  Gwynne  be  likely  to  know  ?" 

"  Mercy,  Nathan,  of  course  not !  They've  been  just  as  busy 
as  can  be  with  the  wedding  for  weeks  —  it's  the  day  after  to 
morrow,  and  they  haven't  had  time  to  think  of  anything  else. 
And  anyway  you  couldn't  keep  track  of  a  person  like  Nance 
unless  she  had  the  face  to  go  and  hire  out  to  somebody  else  we 
all  knew — but  I  suppose  she  didn't  try  that  again,  as  it's  three 
or  four  weeks  now  and  we  haven't  heard.  I  know  it's  a  dread 
ful  thing  to  have  happen,  Nathan,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  with  real 
sympathy  in  her  voice;  "it  must  be  so  hard  for  you  to  have  a 
girl  that  you've  known  all  your  life  turn  out  this  way.  Do 
you  know  we  thought  for  a  while  that  you  were  —  were  in 
terested  in  Nance  in  a  different  way  —  a  not  at  all  brotherly 
way,  you  know  —  you  did  so  much  for  her.  But  afterwards 
you  never  came  near  her  while  she  was  here,  so  I  saw  it  was 
mere  friendship.  Still,  that  doesn't  make  it  any  easier  for 
you.  But  you  don't  need  to  worry  so.  She's  perfectly  ca 
pable  of  taking  care  of  herself,  wherever  she  is." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

CONTAINS  SUNDRY  SOCIAL  EXPERIENCES 

I  HOPE  that  Burke's  grandchildren  will  never  know  a  dis 
tress  of  mind  equal  to  that  with  which  the  young  man  walked 
away  from  the  Ducey  house  in  pursuit  of  his  dreary  quest. 
His  thoughts  beat  about  in  an  idle  circle  of  self-reproach, 
self-excuse.  Over  and  over  again  he  repeated  to  himself 
that  had  Nance  come  to  him  (and  why  had  she  not?)  and  had 
he  known  all  at  the  time  it  happened,  he  still  could  have  said 
and  done  nothing  to  move  Mrs.  Ducey  from  her  conviction. 
She  was  obstinate  and  merciless  as  only  a  truly  good  and  up 
right  woman  can  be,  but  to  Nathan's  youth  and  inexperience 
there  was  something  profoundly  amazing,  even  abnormal  in 
this  association  of  qualities.  He  learned  to  know  the  world 
of  womankind  better,  but  at  the  moment  he  raged  helplessly 
against  what  seemed  to  him  a  woful  lack  of  logic  and  hu 
manity  and  ordinary  common  sense.  To  any  one  who  knew 
Nance,  even  slightly,  it  was  impossible  to  believe  that  she 
could  have  stolen  this  bauble;  it  was  monstrous  to  charge 
her  with  the  theft;  monstrous  to  translate  the  poor  thing's 
astonished  silence,  her  fierce  helplessness,  as  signs  of  guilt. 
Nathan,  who  would  have  freely  acknowledged  a  man's  in 
capacity  to  understand  the  girl,  at  least  understood  her  better 
than  the  good-hearted,  ruthless  woman  with  whom  she  had 
lived  a  year.  Yet  Francie  understood  her;  the  remembrance 
stirred  him  with  a  throb  of  tenderness.  He  went  back  to  the 
office,  and  lit  a  candle  at  his  desk,  and  scrawled  a  word  or 
two  of  thanks  to  Francie  from  a  full  heart;  earnestly  en 
treating  her  to  keep  on  believing  in  Nance,  and  to  defend  her 
when  occasion  came,  and  to  let  him  know  whenever  and 
whatever  she  might  chance  to  hear  of  the  poor  outlaw.  He 
was  on  the  edge  of  signing  himself  hers  affectionately,  when 
he  remembered  with  a  blush  and  a  kind  of  laugh  that  she  was 
considered  a  young  lady  now,  and  might  very  properly 
resent  so  much  familiarity  from  him,  so  that  he  ended  by 

244 


SUNDRY   SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  245 

being  Sincerely,  Nathan  Burke,  and  went  out  and  despatched 
the  note  with  a  slightly  easier  mind. 

Jack  Vardaman,  whom  Nathan  found  at  the  room  when  he 
returned  after  performing  these  duties,  sitting  and  chatting 
with  Mrs.  Sharpless  by  the  reformed  and  sightly  hearth,  eyed 
the  young  man  closely  as  he  entered,  commenting  on  his 
worn  and  weary  look.  "  You're  getting  thinner,  I  believe, 
Nat,"  he  said;  "and  you  haven't  much  margin  in  that  di 
rection.  Heavens,  what  a  beak  you'll  have!  Worse  than 
mine  —  and  that's  a  hard  thing  to  say  of  any  man's  nose!" 

"  It's  taking  care  of  me  and  sitting  up  nights,"  said  Jim,  and 
put  out  his  lean  fist  and  pounded  Nathan  affectionately  on  the 
knee.  "Just  you  wait  —  just  you  wait  till  I  get  you  down, 
my  lad!" 

Mrs.  Sharpless  laid  down  her  work  and  looked  over  at 
Nathan  with  a  sudden  disconcerting  acuteness.  Her  bright 
face  softened  inexplicably.  "What  it  is,  Mr.  Burke  —  what 
has  happened?"  she  said  quickly  and  earnestly;  "you 
look  so  —  oh,  I  know  something  has  happened." 

"Why,  I  —  I—  ''  stammered  Nat,  in  confusion,  a  good 
deal  startled  and  touched  by  this  interest ;  and  then  he  quite 
gave  way  before  their  three  kind,  concerned  faces,  and  told 
them  the  whole  infinitely  small  and  meanly  pathetic  tale. 
He  had  not  meant  to;  but  the  young  fellow  hungered  for 
counsel  and  sympathy;  he  wanted  confidence,  wanted  help, 
wanted  somebody  to  listen  to  his  complaints  and  be  influ 
enced  by  his  arguments. 

"  It's  hard  to  make  you  understand  how  I  feel  about  Nance," 
he  said,  walking  nervously  up  and  down  with  unusual  ges 
tures,  all  his  excitement  at  last  released  and  mastering  him. 
The  little  audience  watched  him  with  wonder;  no  doubt  there 
was  something  almost  painful  to  them  in  this  sudden  violence 
of  so  silent  and  reserved  a  man.  "  I  feel  as  if  it  were  somehow 
all  my  fault  —  all  my  fault.  I  ought  to  have  taken  better 
care  of  her.  I  promised  Darnell  —  I  meant  to.  But  some 
how  things  interfered  —  I  don't  know  how  it  was  —  time 
went  by  —  I  let  it  go.  On  the  face  of  it,  you  know,  it  looked 
all  right.  Anybody  would  have  said  she  had  a  good  home  — 
and  so  she  had.  Only  I  knew  all  along  it  wasn't  the  home 
for  her.  But  what  ought  I  to  have  done  for  her  ?  Where 
could  I  have  put  her  ?  And  now  this !  Why,  it's  incredible, 


246  NATHAN   BURKE 

I  tell  you;  I'd  as  soon  call  one  of  you  a  thief.  I  wouldn't 
have  believed  any  woman  could  be  as  hard  as  Mrs.  Ducey; 
she  hasn't  a  shred  of  proof,  not  a  rag,  not  a  shadow  of  a  reason 
even  for  a  suspicion  —  but  when  she  was  talking  to  me  there, 
why,  I  saw  it  would  take  nothing  less  than  an  angel  from 
heaven,  a  miracle,  to  make  her  believe  otherwise.  What's 
the  matter  with  all  the  women,  anyhow  ?  Why,  even  Mrs. 
Slaney,  when  I  told  her  that  a  young  woman  named  Darnell 
might  possibly  come  here  asking  for  me  —  she  said  none 
had  —  and  if  she  did  to  tell  her  that  I  was  looking  for  her  and 
not  let  her  go  away  —  even  Mrs.  Slaney  looked  blank  and 
began  to  hem  and  haw,  and  say  she  didn't  know,  and  she'd 
always  kept  a  respectable  house!  What's  Mrs.  Slaney  got 
against  Nance?  I  suppose  she's  heard  this  wretched  story 
—  it's  always  the  way,  everybody  in  the  place  hears  a  thing 
except  the  person  most  interested  —  but  she  might  take  my 
word  for  Nance." 

There  was  a  brief  silence  after  this  outburst.  Mrs.  Sharp- 
less  took  up  her  work,  and  set  a  stitch  or  two;  then  she 
abruptly  put  it  down.  "Well,  but  are  you  so  certain  about 
this  —  this  girl,  Mr.  Burke?  I  mean  you  think  you  know 
all  about  her?  She's  very  pretty  —  I've  seen  her  at  Mrs. 
Ducey's  —  and  I  must  say  she  looked  as  if  she  might  have  an 
awful  temper;  but,  of  course,  that  hasn't  got  anything  to  do 
with  this.  The  trouble  is  it's  so  easy  for  a  young  man  to  be 
deceived  in  a  young  woman  —  a  handsome  young  woman  — 

Nathan  looked  at  her  despairingly;  he  could  have  groaned 
aloud. 

"Oh,  mother,  mother,  you  too!"  said  Jim,  and  gave  his 
friend  a  glance  of  whimsically  commingled  humor  and 
sympathy;  "you  may  as  well  give  'em  up,  Nat.  I  believe 
there  never  was  a  woman  in  this  world  so  good  but  that  she 
was  ready  to  say  another  woman  was  no  better  than  she 
ought  to  be!" 

"I  didn't  say  that  at  all,  James;  you  know  I  wouldn't  say 
a  thing  like  that,"  cried  his  mother,  reddening  indignantly, 
and  with  her  face  quivering  a  little  as  sometimes  happened 
under  Jim's  good-nature  satire;  "I'm  just  as  sorry  for  the 
girl  as  can  be.  And  of  course  I  don't  know  anything  about 
her  character,  but  I  hope  she's  all  right.  I  only  said  — " 
"You  only  announced  a  very  sound  and  kindly  principle, 


SUNDRY   SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  247 

I  know  —  I  know,"  said  Jim,  patting  her  hand,  "never  mind 
what  I  say;  don't  feel  badly.  I'm  your  angel  child,  but  I'm 
a  brute  sometimes,  I  know  it." 

"Anyhow,  if  Nance  were  the  dangerous  character  all  the 
ladies  think  she  is,  she's  getting  her  deserts  apparently," 
Burke  said  with  bitterness,  "  being  hunted  from  house  to 
house,  and  now  lost  to  sight  utterly!  It  seems  I'm  powerless 
to  help  her  now,  whatever  I  could  have  done  once." 

Vardaman  got  up  and  laid  his  hand  on  the  other's  shoulder. 
"Why,  Burke,"  he  said  with  a  sort  of  sensible  and  kindly 
sharpness,  "don't  you  see  how  it  is?  A  young  man  can't  go 
around  taking  care  of  a  young  woman,  a  kind  of  a  stray  young 
woman  to  whom  he's  not  even  distantly  kin,  these  days. 
Knight-errantry  doesn't  gee  with  our  modern  notions  of 
propriety  somehow.  You've  got  to  be  interested  in  her  as  a 
grandfather,  or,  by  Jingo,  you  can't  be  interested  in  her  at 
all!  Even  the  grandfathers  aren't  any  too  safe,  according 
to  the  ladies  — " 

"Dr.  Vardaman!"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  reddening  over 
her  whole  face,  and  rising,  "I  think  I'd  better  leave  you  to 
talk  over  the  matter  among  yourselves,  gentlemen,  since  it 
seems  /  don't  know  anything  about  young  women!" 

"Oh,  don't  be  foolish,  mother,"  said  Jim,  pulling  her  down; 
"let  Jack  go  on.  He's  not  saying  anything  improper." 

"Now  you're  not  the  girl's  brother,  and  I  take  it  you  don't 
want  to  marry  her  —  ?"  went  on  Vardaman,  unmoved. 

"Good  heavens,  no!"  Nathan  ejaculated  in  some  perturba 
tion,  "but  can't  I—" 

"No,  you  can't  —  you  can't  do  anything  for  her,"  said  the 
doctor,  emphatically.  "The  more  you  do  for  her,  the  more 
rumpus  you  make  over  her,  the  worse  it  is  for  the  girl.  The 
world's  judgments  are  hard — "  said  the  doctor,  with  a  per 
plexed  smile  —  "but  the  world's  a  deal  older  than  you  and  I, 
and  in  the  long  run  I  don't  know  but  that  its  judgments  are 
pretty  near  correct." 

"It  may  be  so,"  said  Nat,  gloomily,  "but  nothing  I  can  do 
now  can  make  her  case  any  worse  than  it  is  already.  I've 
got  to  find  her,  if  she's  to  be  found.  I've  searched  high  and 
low  —  more  people  knew  about  it  than  I  supposed,  but  no 
body  has  seen  her.  I  even  went  to  the  Lauterbachs  —  they 
are  kind  people,  they  might  have  taken  her  in  —  but  they 


248  NATHAN   BURKE 

hadn't  seen  or  heard  anything  of  her.  I  thought  I'd  go  out 
to  Governor  Gwynne's  and  inquire.  Some  of  the  servants 
might  have  kept  track  of  her.  You  know  the  governor, 
don't  you,  Jack  ?  I'd  like  you  to  go  with  me,  if  you  could 
take  the  time.  It  wouldn't  damn  poor  Nance  irrevocably 
to  have  two  men  looking  for  her,  would  it  ?  There's  safety 
in  numbers." 

This  speech  was  received  in  another  silence  so  marked  that 
it  roused  Burke's  attention;  he  caught  a  swift  glance  passed 
between  Jim  and  his  mother,  and,  looking  at  the  doctor,  per 
ceived  an  abrupt  harshness  or  sternness  replacing  his  ordinary 
genial  expression. 

"I  —  I  don't  think  it  would  do  any  particular  good  for 
you  to  have  me  along,"  Vardaman  said  at  last  with  an  effort. 

"I'll  go  with  you,  Mr.  Burke,  I'll  go;  I  know  Mrs.  David 
Gwynne,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  hurriedly;  "I'm  sure  I'd  be 
glad  for  you  to  find  —  what's  her  name  ?  Nance  ?  I'd  be 
ever  so  glad  if  you  could  find  her.  I'd  like  to  help  you." 

They  made  this  visit  to  the  governor's  house  —  which 
was  at  an  unconscionable  distance  from  town  with  a  grove  of 
trees  and  a  park  of  its  own,  in  a  species  of  lofty  and  handsome 
seclusion  —  in  a  carriage  which  Nat  got  of  our  acquaintance 
the  livery-stable  man ;  and  for  which,  by  the  way,  that  gentle 
man  refused  a  cent  of  hire,  as  soon  as  he  heard  that  it  was 
meant  for  Mrs.  Sharpless' s  use.  "  You  tell  that  little  lady  that 
she's  welcome  to  the  best  I've  got  any  time  she  wants  it,"  he 
said  gallantly;  "she's  a  mighty  sweet  little  lady — pretty 
eyes,  ain't  she  ?  "  he  further  remarked  with  quite  a  sentimental 
sigh.  "You  just  tell  her  she  can  have  anything  I've  got  any 
time  she  feels  like  it  —  the  parson  can  preach  it  out  at  my 
funeral,  I  guess,  if  he  lasts  that  long,"  he  finished  with  a 
grin.  Burke  regaled  him  with  segars  and  a  glass  of  something 
hot  at  the  Erin-go-Bragh  (what  would  Mrs.  Sharpless  have 
said  if  she  had  known  that  f)  as  a  slight  return  for  this  courtesy 
and  rehearsed  the  incident  to  Jim  afterwards,  consumed 
with  laughter,  notwithstanding  the  seriousness  of  the  mo 
ment.  "Why,  what  a  dreadful  little  heart-smasher  Ma  is!" 
said  Jim,  in  pretended  horror;  "goodness,  it's  immoral!  I'm 
afraid  Mary  gets  her  abilities  by  direct  inheritance." 

"I  don't  see  why  you  persist  in  saying  things  like  that 


SUNDRY  SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  249 

about  Ma  —  about  your  sister,"  said  Burke,  resentfully;  "she 
can't  help  being  —  being  attractive  —  she's  not  to  blame  if 
the  men  —  if  they  hang  around  her.  She  —  why  —  she  — 
the  men  can't  help  it  either." 

Jim  looked  up  surprised  at  the  other's  warmth.  "Why, 
I'm  not  saying  anything  against  Mary,  Nat,"  he  expostu 
lated  reasonably;  "lots  of  girls  are  flirts  —  why  shouldn't 
they  be  ?  They  haven't  got  anything  else  to  do.  It  doesn't 
do  any  harm.  You  seem  to  think  it  something  disgraceful." 

"It  might  break  some  poor  fellow's  heart,"  said  Nat, 
coloring  as  he  gave  utterance  to  this  sentimental  theory,  but 
sticking  to  it  manfully,  "  lead  a  man  on,  and  let  him  hope  all 
sorts  of  things,  and  then  throw  him  over  at  the  last!  If  I 
had  a  sister,  I  wouldn't  think  or  say  that  she'd  do  a  thing 
like  that." 

"Pooh!"  retorted  the  other,  good-naturedly  cynical,  "it's 
not  very  often  so  serious  as  that.  Men  may  die  and  worms 
may  eat  them  —  but  not  for  love,  you  know.  You  must 
have  been  reading  some  of  these  infernal  mush-and-milk 
stories  in  the  magazines  —  Graham's  or  Godey's.  By 
George,  I've  got  so  I  never  read  any  of  'em  any  more,  unless 
they're  by  that  fellow,  that  Poe  —  E.  A.  Poe,  you  know  — 
the  one  that  writes  the  curdlers.  I  met  a  man  once  that 
knew  him,"  said  Jim,  not  without  reverence,  "a  fellow  that 
was  out  here  writing  for  the  Cincinnati  Gazette.  He  says 
Poe  drinks  like  a  fish.  But  drunk  or  sober,  he's  a  writer.  As 
for  your  broken-heart  business,  Nat,  you  may  trust  me  there 
aren't  many  of  'em  outside  of  the  novels.  I  know  one  man  — 
but  then,"  Jim  pursued  thoughtfully,  "it's  not  quite  the  same 
thing  with  him.  He  and  the  girl  had  a  fuss,  and  now  she's 
going  to  marry  somebody  else,  and  I  don't  think  he'll  ever 
marry.  He'd  laugh  at  the  notion  of  his  heart  being  broken  — 
but  he'll  never  get  over  it,  just  the  same." 

On  their  way  out  to  the  governor's,  Mrs.  Sharpless,  who, 
it  was  obvious  even  to  Burke's  masculine  senses,  had  on  her 
best  black  silk  and  her  bonnet  with  the  thread  lace  veil,  and 
was  in  a  little  state  of  tremor  and  excitement,  confided  to 
him  that  she  was  afraid  they  were  making  their  visit  at  a 
most  inopportune  season.  "You  know  Louise  is  going  to  be 
married,  Mr.  Burke.  She's  going  to  marry  Mr.  Andrews  — 
Leonard  Andrews,  not  Charlie  —  Leonard  is  the  wealthy 


250  NATHAN   BURKE 

one,  you  know;  that  is,  he'll  have  money,  old  Mr.  Edward 
Andrews's  son.  Charlie  hasn't  got  anything,  and  then  he  has 
to  take  care  of  his  mother  and  sister  — " 

"I  know,"  said  Burke,  absently,  "I  see  a  good  deal  of  both 
of  them.  Leonard's  in  the  bank,  and  Charlie's  with  Lathrop's 
commission-house  right  next  door  to  us." 

"  Yes.  Well,  it's  Leonard  that's  to  marry  Louise  Gwynne, 
you  know.  The  house  will  be  all  torn  up.  Bishop  Mcll- 
vaine's  going  to  marry  them,  and  it's  to  be  a  home  wed- 
ding- 

"Well,  ours  is  only  a  business  visit,  and  they're  not  to  have 
the  wedding  till  to-morrow,  are  they?  They  surely  won't 
be  inconvenienced  the  little  time  I'll  take.  I  only  want  to 
ask  the  servants  a  few  questions,"  said  Burke,  staring  out  at 
the  doleful  winter  landscape,  and  wondering  dejectedly  where 
in  that  waste  of  melting  snow  and  slush,  dreary  streets, 
tumbledown  shanties,  and  sodden  fields  —  they  were  trun 
dling  slowly  through  the  outskirts  of  the  town  —  Nance 
might  be  hiding  herself.  A  thaw  was  setting  in  with  thin 
persistent  rain  and  a  spiteful  wind.  The  roads  were  ankle- 
deep  in  semiliquid  mud;  the  sky  hung  low  and  looked  like 
dirty  white  cotton.  Just  ahead  a  covered  van  laden  with 
chairs  and  tables  and  crates  of  crockery  was  stalled  in  the 
heavy  going,  and  the  men  in  charge  had  got  down  and  were 
cursing  and  bawling  and  heaving  at  the  wheels  and  the  horses 
were  straining  on  the  yoke.  According  to  the  weather,  Miss 
Gwynne's  wedding  was  an  ill-omened  venture. 

"Those  things  must  be  meant  for  the  Gwynne  house,"  said 
Mrs.  Sharpless,  alertly;  "mercy,  what  a  time  they're  having  ! 
It  will  be  awful  for  all  of  us  driving  out  to  the  wedding,  won't 
it  ?  Such  a  pity  !  Mrs.  Lucien  Gwynne  is  going  to  stop  for 
us,  and  take  Mary  and  me  out  in  her  carriage  —  we're  lucky, 
aren't  we  ?  It's  on  Mary's  account,  of  course,"  said  Mrs. 
Sharpless,  smoothing  her  gloves  with  that  little  self-effacing 
air  of  pride  and  content  common  to  mothers;  "Mary's 
going  to  play  the  wedding-march  for  them  —  when  they 
come  in,  you  know.  I  believe  Mrs.  Gwynne  wanted  to  have 
fiddles  and  a  harp  —  those  men  that  play  for  all  the  big 
dances,  you  know,  and  the  subscription-balls  —  but  Louise 
said  she  wouldn't  have  anybody  but  Mary  Sharpless. 
They've  always  been  friends." 


SUNDRY   SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  251 

"Miss  Mary  plays  beautifully,"  said  Burke,  interested  at 
once;  "I  should  think  they'd  be  proud  to  have  her." 

"  Yes  —  of  course  /  think  so.  She  won't  play  for  the  danc 
ing  afterwards,  though,  Mr.  Burke,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless, 
hastily;  " they've  hired  the  men  for  that." 

"It's  a  shame  she  has  to  play  at  all  —  it's  a  shame  for  her 
to  have  to  work,  anyhow,"  growled  the  young  man,  whole 
heartedly. 

"Why,  she  don't  have  to,  Mr.  Burke,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless, 
with  a  startled  look.  "What  made  you  think  that?"  And 
she  explained  that  Mary  only  did  it  for  "extras  and  a  little 
pocket-money."  The  intelligence  surprised  Mr.  Burke  not 
a  little,  as  he  had  somehow  got  the  idea  that  the  daily  bread 
of  the  Sharpless  family  depended  almost  entirely  on  Mary's 
exertions.  The  young  lady  could  not  have  told  him  so  her 
self;  certainly  Jim  never  had;  it  must  have  been  Nat's 
own  dull  guesswork. 

"So  funny,  Leonard  Andrews  is  so  musical,  and  used  to 
come  to  our  house  so  much  to  sing  with  Mary  and  hear  her 
play.  And  here  he's  going  to  marry  Louise  Gwynne  and  she 
hasn't  any  more  voice  than  a  crow,  and  doesn't  know  one 
tune  from  the  next!  So  funny  the  way  people  marry,  isn't 
it?"  said  the  mother,  pensively.  "Louise  is  considered  very 
pretty  in  spite  of  that  fiery  red  hair  —  and  I  don't  think 
that's  such  a  blemish,"  she  added  with  a  heroic  generosity. 
"She  was  engaged  to  Jack  Vardaman  for  a  while,  but  she 
broke  it  off." 

"Oh!"  said  Nat,  suddenly  illuminated. 

"Yes.  I  saw  you  didn't  know  about  it.  Poor  Jack! 
Maybe  it's  better  so,  though  —  marriage  is  such  a  lottery," 
said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  unable,  kind  and  sweet  woman  as  she 
was,  entirely  to  suppress  her  lurking  conviction  that  maybe 
Dr.  Vardaman  might  have  drawn  a  blank.  Burke  listened, 
momentarily  forgetting  his  errand,  with  a  feeling  oddly 
compounded  of  relief  and  anxiety.  He  was  outside  the 
bright  little  social  world  in  which  Mary  revolved;  a  dozen 
young  men  might  be  laying  siege  to  her,  and  he  would  be 
obliged  to  stand  by  helpless  in  his  pride  and  poverty.  Yet 
surely  she  looked  at  him  kindly  sometimes.  He  wondered, 
in  his  adoring  admiration,  what  miracle  had  kept  her  single 
thus  far  —  yet  what  man  could  be  good  enough  for  her  ?  Nat 


252  NATHAN    BURKE 

humbly  allowed  that  he  himself  was  not;  if  he  had  had  money 
and  talents  and  everything  the  world  values  to  lay  at  her  feet, 
he  would  still  be  unworthy  of  her,  the  young  fellow  thought. 
This  humility  did  not  prevent  his  hearing  with  a  throb  of 
satisfaction  that  that  overdressed  dandy,  Leonard  Andrews, 
with  his  voice  and  his  musical  tastes,  forsooth,  could  not  win 
her.  'Andrews  was  really  a  good-looking  and  amiable  young 
man,  and  Nat  had  not  thought  of  him  with  enmity  before; 
but  even  in  defeat  the  fact  that  poor  Leonard  had  possibly 
been  one  of  the  candidates  filled  Burke  with  a  kind  of  trium 
phant  dislike. 

The  ex-governor's  residence,  which  was  a  great,  dignified, 
imposing  place,  with  huge  pillars  and  high  ceilings  and  very 
rich  furnishings  in  the  fashion  of  the  day,  was  "torn  up"  to  a 
degree  that  threw  Mrs.  Sharpless  into  a  feminine  ecstasy. 
Men  were  erecting  a  tunnel  of  awning  over  the  front  steps; 
there  were  step-ladders  and  chairs  everywhere;  and  a  rather 
pretty  little  girl  —  red-haired,  too  —  whom  Mrs.  Sharpless 
called  Harriet,  and  who,  I  think,  was  the  governor's  youngest 
child,  came  running  to  the  door,  very  happy,  important,  and 
excited,  and  led  the  visitors  in,  chattering  meanwhile  in  her 
high  childish  voice.  She  didn't  know  whether  they  could  see 
Aunt  Marian  —  everything  was  so  torn  up,  and  they  were  all 
so  busy,  but  Papa  was  upstairs  in  the  study  —  and  oh,  Mrs. 
Sharpless,  just  look  what  the  men  were  doing  to  our  parlors! 
They  were,  in  fact,  spreading  down  acres  of  floor-cloth  and 
others  were  marking  out  upon  it  with  red  chalk  certain  mystic 
characters  which,  Mrs.  Sharpless  informed  Nat  delightedly, 
were  "the  figures  for  the  wedding-quadrille,  you  know, 
Mr.  Burke;  the  bride's  quadrille,  when  the  bridal  party  open 
the  ball."  They  eyed  them  respectfully.  An  artist  in  a 
square  white  cap  was  devising  the  most  extraordinary  edible 
monuments  for  table  decorations,  in  a  big  pantry  opening 
into  the  dining  room  —  pyramids  of  oranges  divided  into 
their  sections  and  each  section  crystallized  in  a  sort  of  sugar 
frost  with  a  shimmering  web  of  clear,  golden,  floss-like  spun 
candy  piled  in  a  cone-shape  over  all.  "The  table's  going  to 
be  elegant,  isn't  it?"  breathed  Mrs.  Sharpless,  entranced 
before  this  masterpiece.  "Are  there  going  to  be  two  of  those 
beehives  ?" 

"That  ain't  anything,"  shrilled  little  Harriet,  excitedly, 


SUNDRY  SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  253 

hopping  on  one  foot;  "you  ought  to  see  the  ice-cream  moulds; 
I've  seen  'em.  They're  going  to  have  two  turtle-doves  with 
their  beaks  together  sitting  on  a  platter,  and  a  boat,  a  big, 
big  boat  all  out  of  ice-cream  in  a  dish  with  waves  all  'round  it, 
and  the  waves  are  wine  jelly  underneath  and  whipped  cream 
on  top,  ain't  they  ? ' '  She  appealed  to  the  caterer,  who  nodded, 
grinning.  "And  there's  chicken  salad  and  tongue  and  ham 
and  sandwiches  and  —  and  coffee  and  cake  —  and  oh,  her 
cake  is  all  white  with  flowers  and  hearts  on  it,  and  his  has 
got  laurel-leaves,  and  we're  all  going  to  have  a  piece  to  sleep 
on!" 

Mrs.  G wynne,  a  plump,  worried  little  woman  in  a  figured 
cashmere  morning-gown  and  large  jet  ear-rings,  with  her 
lace  cap  awry  and  a  shawl  shrugged  about  her  shoulders, 
came  shivering  in  from  the  side-porch,  where  she  had  been 
giving  some  order,  and  stared  when  she  saw  them.  She 
stared  harder  when  Burke  was  presented  and  his  errand  ex 
plained,  which  Mrs.  Sharpless  did  nra  manner  that  suggested, 
"Well,  I  know  he's  a  perfect  nuisance,  but  I  couldn't  help  it. 
And  after  all  the  poor  fellow  means  well.  He's  nothing  but  a 
man,  you  know." 

"Oh,  yes,  I  remember  the  young  woman  —  but  really  I 
don't  know  anything  about  her,  Mr.  —  ah  —  I  don't  know 
where  she  went  from  here,  I  haven't  had  time  to  — to  bother, 
you  know  —  it's  very  unfortunate,  of  course,"  said  Mrs. 
Gwynne,  with  her  eyes  everywhere  except  on  Nathan. 
"Harriet,  run  and  tell  them  they  are  not  to  undo  that  china 
on  the  porch,  it  makes  so  much  muss;  that  will  be  the  fifth 
time  to-day  I've  had  it  swept.  Of  course,  you  can  ask  the 
other  servants ;  they  may  know  something.  Mrs.  Ducey's 
letter  gave  me  to  understand  —  oh,  be  careful,  please,  you'll 
knock  into  the  chandelier  —  and,  of  course,  you  know,  Mr.  — 
ah  —  after  what  she  said,  I  hadn't  really  any  choice,  I  simply 
had  to  dismiss  —  oh,  mercy,  I  don't  want  the  piano  in  that 
comer  —  excuse  me  a  minute,  please,  Mr.  —  ah  -  I  told 
you  distinctly  I  wanted  it  in  this  corner.  There  wouldn't 
be  any  room  for  Mary  to  sit  down,  if  they  ran  it  back  that  far, 
would  there,  Mrs.  Sharpless?" 

"Why,  I  don't  know,"  said  the  other  lady,  following  Mrs. 
Gwynne  into  the  drawing-room  whither  she  had  dashed,  and 
calculating  with  her  head  on  one  side.  "Yes,  there  might 


254  NATHAN    BURKE 

be  —  only  her  hoop,   you  know,  they  take  up  so    much 
room  — 

"There's  to  be  a  screen  around  it,  so  nobody'll  see  her 
playing  —  still  it  wouldn't  do  for  her  to  be  too  squeezed 
up-" 

They  remained  in  consultation,  while  two  able-bodied 
gentlemen  in  shirt-sleeves,  breathing  deep  and  anon  wiping 
their  two  several  brows  with  two  Isabella-colored  handker 
chiefs,  wheeled  the  piano  backwards  and  forwards  according 
to  instructions.  Burke,  stranded  in  the  dining  room,  felt 
himself  with  some  impatience  utterly  forgotten  in  this  petti 
coat  world.  He  waylaid  a  passing  maid-servant  and  was 
proceeding  to  his  inquiries  when  the  young  woman  interrupted 
him  —  she  really  didn't  know  —  she'd  tell  Mr.  Gwynne  — 
he  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Gwynne,  didn't  he?  If  he'd  just  wait  a 
minute  —  she  had  to  unpack  them  plates  and  tumblers  — 
she,  too,  was  gone,  and  Mr.  Burke  was  beginning  to  wonder 
desperately  if  he  had  not  better  canvass  the  kitchen  and  rear 
premises  without  leave  or  warrant,  when  the  master  of  the 
house  appeared. 

To  Nat's  huge  surprise,  Gwynne  (who  himself  wore  rather 
a  neglected  and,  as  it  were,  second-rate  look,  and  it  presently 
appeared,  had  come  downstairs  in  search  of  coal  for  his  fire, 
which  everybody  had  forgotten !)  remembered  him,  and  shook 
hands,  calling  him  by  name,  and  referring  to  their  previous 
meeting  with  labored  geniality;  and  heard  Burke's  apologies 
and  explanations  with  an  effort,  at  least,  to  seem  interested. 
It  is  likely  that  the  old  gentleman,  like  Nathan  himself,  felt  a 
certain  comfort  in  the  transient  company  of  another  male 
being ;  there  was  a  humor  in  the  situation  not  wholly  lost 
on  the  governor,  although  he  was  by  no  means  of  a  humorous 
turn.  The  Honorable  Samuel  Gwynne  was  ordinarily  a 
chilly,  dignified,  impersonal  sort  of  man,  whose  unfortunate 
manner,  people  said,  had  militated  strongly  against  his  po 
litical  success.  He  was  never  popular,  though  nobody  could 
have  made  more  conscientious  or  painful  attempts  at  all  the 
arts  of  popularity.  Even  young  Burke,  who  came  to  know 
him  well  in  later  years,  and  to  appreciate  all  the  governor's 
sterling  and  manly  qualities,  used  to  wonder  with  a  kind  of 
puzzled  pity  at  his  perfunctory  suavity. 

"I  feel  that  this  is  a  gross  intrusion,"  the  young  fellow 


SUNDRY  SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  255 

explained,  "but  you  understand  in  the  circumstances  it  is 
imperative  for  me  to  find  out  whatever  I  can  at  once,  without 
losing  any  more  time  — 

"  Certainly,  Mr.  Burke,  certainly,"  said  Gwynne,  with  a 
strained  heartiness,  "Fll  have  all  the  servants  in.  You  can 
question  them  at  your  leisure  —  there  is  really  no  need  for 
all  this  confusion,  but  the  ladies  — "  he  waved  his  hand. 
And  the  cook  and  sundry  others  —  some  half-dozen  in  all  — 
being  forthwith  summoned,  the  examination  began. 

Burke  had  not  had  much  hope  of  it;  one  of  the  maids  was 
newly  come  and  knew  nothing  about  what  had  happened. 
The  cook,  who  was  an  elderly  woman,  quite  tigerishly  respect 
able  and  of  unimpeachable  manners,  really  never  had  had 
any  opinion  of  the  Darnell  girl,  and  she  wasn't  at  all  surprised 
the  way  things  had  turned  out,  for  she  had  said  to  a  friend 
right  at  the  very  start,  "You  mark  my  words,  Maria,  that 
Nance  young  woman  will  bear  watching.  That  sort's  too 
pretty  for  their  own  good."  Hadn't  she  said  that,  Nora? 
Didn't  you  hear  her  say  that  to  Maria  ?  It  was  the  day  they 
were  making  the  mince-meat,  she  remembered  just  as  well, 
saying  to  Maria,  You  mark  my  words,  there's  something 
wrong  with  that  Darnell  girl.  And  if  the  young  gentleman 
didn't  mind  her  saying  it,  seeing  she  was  old  enough  to  be  his 
mother,  it's  very  easy  for  a  girl  —  a  pretty  girl  —  to  take  in 
any  young  man  —  !  Only  one  of  them,  a  slip  of  a  girl  in  her 
teens  whom  they  called  Hannah,  and  who  had  a  kind,  homely 
face,  burst  out  crying  with  her  honest,  soapy  red  fists  in  her 
eyes,  and  said  she  liked  Nance,  she  did !  And  she  didn't 
believe  Nance  had  never  stole  nothing,  she  didn't!  And 
Nance  hadn't  said  where  she  was  going  because,  Land !  the 
poor  thing  didn't  know.  But  she,  Hannah,  had  told  her  to 
try  for  a  place  in  a  boarding-house.  "They  ain't  as  per- 
tickler  as  ladies,  you  know,  sir,  because  it's  hard  for  'em  to 
get  any  help  at  all  for  a  boarding-house,  on  'count  of  the 
work,"  said  the  youngster,  with  a  nai've  shrewdness. 

And  this  was  all.  No,  not  quite  all,  for  Burke's  ill-timed 
visit  to  Governor  Gwynne's  had  another  result  which  ever 
afterward  appeared  to  Nat  as  the  final  stroke  of  irony  with 
which  the  Fate,  whose  province  it  was  to  direct  his  affairs, 
dismissed  this  mean  tragedy  of  Nance  Darnell. 

"Will  you  have  a  drink,  Mr.  Burke?"  said  the  governor, 


256  NATHAN    BURKE 

after  the  inquiry  was  finished.  "Marian,  you  and  Mrs. 
Sharpless  had  better  take  a  little  Madeira,  hadn't  you  ?  Sir, 
you  handled  your  —  ah  —  your  witnesses,  as  I  may  call  them, 
with  quite  a  court-room  manner.  You  have  the  right  idea. 
Never  bully  a  witness;  engage  his  confidence  and  you'll  get 
infinitely  better  results  —  that  has  been  my  experience. 
Help  yourself,  sir,"  said  Gwynne,  affably,  and  poured  out,  for 
his  own  part,  the  weakest  mixture  imaginable,  which  he  sipped 
slowly  and  with  no  particular  gusto.  Old  Mr.  Marsh  told 
Nat  afterwards  that  Gwynne  disliked  whiskey,  and  had  been 
obliged  to  cultivate  conviviality  like  one  of  the  fine  arts. 
"You  —  ah  —  you  are  studying  law,  I  understand,  Mr. 
Burke?" 

The  young  man  colored  and  stammered  as  he  said  yes, 
and  answered  the  governor's  leading  questions  at  large;  he 
was  highly  flattered  by  the  old  politician's  notice,  whether  it 
was  prompted  by  genuine  interest  or  not;  and  blushed  after 
wards  when  he  remembered  how  freely  he  talked  about  him 
self  and  his  work. 

"I  heard  so  from  my  nephew  Gilbert,  whom  I  have  with 
me  in  the  office,  as  I  have  no  doubt  you  know.  He  tells  me 
he  has  met  you  several  times  at  the  Court-house,"  the  gov 
ernor  continued  with  that  civility,  which,  try  as  he  would, 
was  entirely  devoid  of  warmth. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  know  Mr.  Gilbert  Gwynne,"  said  Burke,  won 
dering  privately  if  it  would  have  been  possible  to  have  lived 
a  day  in  our  city  and  not  known  some  member  of  the  Gwynne 
family.  The  connection  was  very  large,  and  every  one  of 
them  abode  —  more  or  less  —  in  the  shadow  of  the  govern 
or's  wing. 

"  Yes.  What  you  say  about  your  private  studies  interests 
me  greatly,  Mr.  Burke  —  it  reminds  me  of  my  own  young 
days.  My  youth  was  —  er  —  without  many  advantages," 
said  the  governor,  sipping  his  weak  punch  in  a  modest  way; 
"as  I  look  back  now,  I  may  truthfully  say  I  am  glad  of 
it  — "  and  he  added  some  handsome  phrases  about  "Repub 
lican  simplicity,"  "the  dignity  of  toil,"  and  "the  delights  of 
difficult,  honorable  achievement,"  which,  Burke  thought, 
bore  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  peroration  of  the  governor's 
speech  in  support  of  Harrison  during  the  last  campaign. 
Gwynne's  own  large  family  of  boys  were  growing  up  a  reck- 


SUNDRY   SOCIAL   EXPERIENCES  257 

less,  untamable  set,  who  never  showed  the  least  desire  to  work, 
and  of  whom  everybody  prophesied  an  evil  end.  "It  would 
give  me  sincere  pleasure  to  be  of  assistance  to  you,  Mr.  Burke. 
If  opportunity  occurs,  I  hope  you  will  remember  that  I  am 
always  more  than  pleased  to  have  any  earnest  young  man  read 
in  my  office,  and  to  give  him  the  benefit  of  my  long  acquaint 
ance  with  the  theory  and  practice  of  law.  I  am  an  older 
soldier,  sir,  not  a  better.  Ingenuas  didicisse  —  I  dare  say 
you  can  supply  the  rest,"  said  Governor  Gwynne,  very  ele 
gantly.  And  the  carriage  was  called,  and  we  drove  away. 

And  this  was  the  sole  and  most  unlooked-for  outcome  of 
Nathan's  search!  For  if  it  had  not  been  for  poor  Nance's 
misfortunes,  —  misfortunes  which,  right  or  wrong,  Burke 
always  laid  in  part  at  his  own  door,  —  he  never  would  have 
gone  to  Governor  Gwynne's,  never  have  met  that  statesman 
in  this  domestic  intimacy  and  familiarity,  never  have  been 
offered  a  place  in  Gwynne's  office,  a  corner  of  his  aegis.  I 
dare  say  Mr.  Burke  could  have  got  along  tolerably  well  with 
out,  and  cut  just  as  notable  a  figure  in  the  world.  He  rested 
content  not  to  aim  very  high,  but  to  hit  where  he  aimed;  and 
no  doubt  these  events  which  seemed  to  him  so  momentous 
were  trivial  enough  after  all  —  hardly  worth  recording  even 
for  his  devoted  grandchildren,  who  will  feel  it  a  pious  duty  to 
read  through  all  the  old  fellow's  prattle.  Yet  every  man's 
life  is  made  up  of  these  infinite  smallnesses,  and  where  would 
the  sea  be,  pray  tell,  but  for  the  multitudinous  drops  of  water  ? 


CHAPTER  XIX 
IN  WHICH  THE  BAR  RECEIVES  A  NOTABLE  ADDITION 

NOWADAYS  I  feel  a  shock  of  surprise,  a  kind  of  feeble 
wonder,  when  1 1  remember  how  great  and  despotic  was  the 
part  played  by  Time  and  Distance  upon  this  planet  when 
Nathan  Burke  was  young.  Men's  means  of  getting  about 
were  no  better  than  they  had  been  in  the  Dark  Ages  ;  it  was 
ten  years  before  that  beneficent  instrument,  Morse's  tele 
graph,  clicked  its  first  message  for  us;  the  roads,  for  the  first 
two  months  of  the  year,  were  in  such  a  state  that  Legislature 
and  the  circuit  courts  never  sat  during  that  time,  it  being 
impossible  to  reach  the  capitol,  or  anywhere  else;  we  had  to 
pay  to  take  our  letters  out  of  the  post-office,  and  used  to  send 
them  privately  by  any  friend  whom  we  could  suborn.  Sena 
tors  and  Congressmen  got  theirs  through  under  a  " frank," 
and  lucky  was  the  man  who  knew  one  of  these  law-givers. 
When,  as  not  infrequently  happens,  I  hear  some  member  of 
my  lessening  staff  of  contemporaries  lamenting  the  good  old 
times,  I  mildly  recall  these  drawbacks  to  his  mind.  And  Jim 
Sharpless  is  in  the  habit  of  remarking  that  the  only  good 
thing  about  *  the  good  old  times  (in  his  observation)  is 
the  indisputable  fact  that  deer-meat  was  only  seven  cents  a 
pound ! 

But,  taking  these  things  into  consideration,  it  is  not  sur 
prising  that  every  effort  Nathan  made  to  find  the  poor  girl 
he  had  promised  his  old  friend  to  protect  and  care  for,  failed; 
the  search  had  begun  too  late.  The  young  man  spared  no 
trouble  in  his  unavailing  anxiety  and  regret.  He  informed 
the  police ;  he  put  —  with  an  intolerable  shrinking  —  a  little 
notice  in  the  corner  of  the  paper,  the  Journal,  which  came 
out  only  once  a  week  during  this  slack  season,  although  it 
was  a  tri-weekly  and  even  a  daily  whenever  the  Legislature 
was  sitting  or  anything  of  importance  was  going  on;  he 
pried  into  all  sorts  of  likely  and  unlikely  places,  followed  up 
two  or  three  false  clews,  sought  amongst  the  dregs  with  less 

258 


THE    BAR   RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     259 

desire  to  find  her  than  unspeakable  relief  at  not  finding  her; 
and  at  last  went  one  day  with  a  stricken  heart  to  view  a  body 
which  had  been  hauled  out  of  the  Scioto  a  mile  or  so  below 
town  and  conveyed  to  the  coroner's.  "Th'  ice  has  kep'  her 
real  good,"  one  of  the  officials  informed  him;  "you  kin 
reckonize  her  easy  —  her  features  is  all  there.  They  fished 
her  out  —  she'd  floated  to  th'  top,  of  course  —  at  a  bend, 
y'know,  where  they's  a  kinder  back-water  that  swep'  her 
up  agin  th'  shore.  She's  got  on  a  blue  waist  —  did  your  girl 
have  on  a  blue  waist  ?" 

"I  don't  know,"  groaned  Nat,  in  a  choking  apprehension. 
But  it  was  not  Nance;  the  poor  creature  in  the  blue  waist 
was  a  much  older  woman,  with  gray  hair  clinging  to  her 
awful  discolored  temples;  and  they  buried  her,  next  day  or 
so,  in  potter's  field. 

It  would  be  claiming  too  much  to  say  that  this  sad  thing 
shadowed  Burke's  spirits  permanently,  or  even  for  a  very 
long  while.  There  is  no  sorrow,  no  suffering,  no  calamity  in 
Life's  bestowal  which  we  cannot  bear  tolerantly,  and  to  which 
we  cannot,  by  some  hook  or  crook,  adjust  ourselves.  If  you 
and  I  were  forever  to  be  dwelling  on  our  losses  and  failures, 
on  death  and  disappointment,  this  world  would  be  a  dull  and 
doleful  place.  We  may  as  well  make  up  our  minds  to  it,  no 
action  is  long  regretted  and  nobody  is  much  missed.  Les 
morts  vont  vite  !  It's  well  they  should;  it's  well  we  should  have 
our  grief  and  dismiss  it,  and  go  about  our  business  of  living  as 
best  we  can.  Come,  let  us  be  plain;  I  have  lived  awhile, 
and  setting  aside  young  children,  I  have  yet  to  know  the 
person  whose  return  after  half-a-dozen  years  —  or  months !  — 
of  death,  would  not  occasion  a  great  deal  of  inconvenience, 
and  even  some  scandal.  Why  should  it  not  be  so  ?  We  must 
live,  we  must  scratch  along  somehow,  and  it's  no  sin  to  forget. 
Nat  was  young;  he  had  his  way  to  make;  he  was  not  of  a 
despondent,  brooding,  or  impressionable  nature.  He  had,  I 
think,  a  good  heart,  and  was  steadfast  in  his  friendships  and 
beliefs;  and  if  he  had  done  wrong,  he  tried  his  best  to  repair 
it.  But,  finding  that  it  could  not  apparently  be  repaired, 
perhaps  the  young  man  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  finally  ceasing 
to  think  about  it.  All  this  while  he  was  diligent  at  his  daily 
work,  and,  as  usual,  did  not  take  many  people  into  his  confi 
dence.  Nobody  wanted  to  know  his  troubles,  he  used  to 


260  NATHAN    BURKE 

think,  with  a  kind  of  laugh;  they  were  too  busy  telling  him 
their  own.  And  it  was  only  to  Sharpless  and  old  Mr.  Marsh 
that  he  rehearsed  Governor  Gwynne's  unprecedented  offer. 

"I  can't  think  why  he  did  it,"  he  told  the  old  dictator  at 
the  store,  openly;  "he  didn't  need  to  the  least  in  the  world. 
I've  always  understood  he  was  very  kind  to  young  men  just 
starting  out  in  the  law  —  but  I  didn't  suppose  he'd  be  that 
kind.  I  think  perhaps  he  just  felt  rather  kindly  towards 
everybody  about  that  time  —  what  with  this  wedding  and 
all  —  and  worked  off  a  little  of  the  good  feeling  on  me.  Prob 
ably  he'd  have  done  the  same  for  anybody  that  came  along, 
so  there's  no  need  for  me  to  get  cocky  about  it,  I  guess.  I 
don't  want  to  presume  on  it;  I  was  a  little  uncertain  whether 
I'd  better  take  him  up,  or  not  (it  would  be  a  big  thing  for  me, 
you  know,  to  study  in  his  office,  I  —  I'd  like  to  mighty  well), 
but  I  met  Gilbert  Gwynne  the  other  day,  and  he  spoke  about 
my  coming  there.  So  I'm  going  up  every  day  now  at  the 
noon  hour,  or  in  the  evening,  or  any  spare  time  I  happen  to 
have.  There's  a  couple  of  other  men  in  the  office  —  Archer 
Lewis,  and  that  cousin  of  the  governor's,  Steven  Gwynne, 
the  one  that's  a  little  queer,  you  know,  and  Gilbert  and  my 
self.  I  find  I'm  about  as  far  along  as  the  rest  in  some  ways 
and  a  little  behind  'em  in  others,  and  I've  wasted  a  lot  of  time 
studying  things  that  won't  ever  do  me  much  good  —  I  didn't 
know,  you  see.  But  I  guess  any  sort  of  study  is  good  for 
one.  The  governor's  very  pleasant  to  all  of  us;  he  doesn't 
come  down  every  day.  I've  only  seen  him  once  or  twice 
since  I've  been  going.  Gilbert  says  he  thinks  his  uncle  means 
to  relinquish  the  practice  gradually,  but  he's  always  been  a 
worker  and  he  hates  to  let  go  altogether." 

"  Huh,  that  ain't  all  there  is  of  it,  "  said  Marsh,  acutely; 
"I  know  Gwynne  pretty  well  —  I've  known  him  for  twenty- 
five  years.  He  don't  give  a  damn  for  the  law-practice  now — 
he's  made  his  money.  He  just  holds  on  because  he  can't  bear 
to  give  up  and  set  back  out  of  the  public  eye,  as  you  might 
say.  He  knows  if  he  retired  from  practice,  and  left  the 
office  and  kind  of  settled  down  out  at  that  big  place  of  his, 
why,  he'd  be  forgotten  in  three  shakes  of  a  cow's  tail.  There 
ain't  anything  to  it  for  him  but  to  sit  around  where  people 
can't  fail  to  see  him.  He  talks  about  being  l  out  of  politics ' 
—  all  bluff!  He's  just  as  keen  as  ever  after  notice  and 


THE   BAR  RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     261 

popularity;  there  ain't  hardly  any  kind  of  nomination,  ex 
cept  for  Police  Judge,  that  Sam  Gwynne  wouldn't  take.  I 
ain't  running  him  down,  you  know.  He's  a  smart  man  and 
a  good  lawyer,  and  as  honest  as  the  run  of  politicians,  I 
guess.  But,  Nathan  — "  said  the  sage,  giving  his  compan 
ion  a  sharp  glance  out  of  eyes  which  seemed  to  have  grown 
smaller  and  more  deeply  bedded  in  wrinkles  than  ever  of  late 
years  —  "Sam  G Wynne's  a  disappointed  man.  He's  never 
got  to  where  he  wanted  to." 

"Why,  he's  been  governor  of  this  State  twice  —  two 
terms!"  interposed  the  other.  Old  George  put  that  fact 
aside  with  a  slighting  gesture. 

"Yes,  I  know — but  he'd  have  liked  to  work  up  a  little 
higher,  and  he's  never  quite  been  able  to.  People  might 
trust  him,  but,  by  damn,  they  don't  like  him  enough.  He 
hasn't  given  up  hope  yet;  he's  always  making  some  move 
for  popularity.  But  he's  a  cold  man;  people  can  see  it's 
all  put  on  with  him.  To  be  sure  it's  all  put  on  with  the  rest 
of  'em  —  kissing  the  babies,  and  shaking  hands  with  the 
boys,  and  borrowing  Pa's  pipe  for  a  smoke,  and  telling 
the  woman  he  never  ate  such  stew  and  dumplings  —  but 
Gywnne  can't  act  it  well.  He  pumps  it  up  and  they  know 
it.  He'd  do  better  not  to  try  so  hard." 

Burke  listened  with  an  odd  discomfiture.  In  spite  of  all 
his  fine  disclaimers,  and  in  spite,  too,  of  that  very  artificiality 
in  Governor  Gwynne's  manner  which  Nat  himself  had  de 
tected,  the  youth  had  cherished  a  secret  belief  that  some 
thing  noteworthy  about  him  had  drawn  the  governor's  eye. 
It  was  not  very  agreeable  to  be  informed  in  cold  blood  that 
he  was  after  all  nothing  but  a  pawn  on  the  board,  that  to 
"clinch  the  young  men's  vote,"  and  never  let  slip  a  chance 
to  get  "  hand-in-glove  with  everybody,  no  matter  how  insig 
nificant"  (I  quote  Mr.  Marsh)  was  a  recognized  manoeuvre 
in  the  game.  Nat  had  to  smile  at  his  own  conceit.  It  is 
so  hard  for  an  honest  man  to  be  honest  with  himself,  I  think 
we  should  take  more  pity  on  the  rogues.  When  I  announce 
that  I  know  I'm  not  handsome,  why,  damme,  sir,  it's  your 
business  to  demur.  What  d'ye  mean  by  acquiescing  with  that 
cheerful  grin  ?  I'd  just  as  lief  confess  that  I'm  not  clever, 
but  you  tell  me  so,  and  I'll  have  some  ado  not  to  knock  you 
down! 


262  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Gywnne  worked  pretty  hard  this  last  campaign,  for  a 
man  of  his  age,"  said  Marsh  (who  was  at  least  ten  years 
older);  "and  he  had  a  right  to  expect  something.  He'd 
have  got  something,  too,  I  haven't  any  doubt;  but  here 
within  a  month  after  the  inauguration  Harrison  dies  and 
Tyler  comes  in,  and  that  knocks  Gywnne's  chances  natter 
than  a  busted  balloon.  He's  not  a  personal  friend  of  Tyler's, 
like  he  was  of  Harrison,  and  he  can't  bring  any  pressure  to 
bear  on  him.  Hard  lines,  ain't  it?"  concluded  the  old  man 
with  a  sort  of  cynical  sympathy.  Was  there  a  creature  on 
earth  in  whom  George  Marsh  believed  ?  What  kind  of  a 
world  must  that  be,  Burke  wondered,  in  which  Marsh  passed 
his  niggling,  huckstering,  striving,  doubling,  planning  exist 
ence  ?  Friends,  home,  a  wife  and  children,  were  left  out  of 
it;  trust  and  affection  were  left  out  of  it;  he  might  have  had 
these,  yet  not  been  happy,  and  in  fairness  it  ought  to  be 
said  that  he  never  seemed  unhappy.  We  are  so  fond  of 
that  splendid  moral  spectacle  of  Dives  sitting  lonely  and 
friendless  and  bitter-hearted  at  his  great  rich  table,  and 
Lazarus  humbly  happy  over  his  porridge  with  a  wife  and 
seven  children,  not  a  penny  in  his  ragged  pockets,  but  con 
tent  in  his  soul  —  I  say  we  are  so  fond  of  drawing  this  pious 
contrast  that  we  are  liable  to  overlook  the  fact  that  the  shoe 
is  sometimes  on  the  other  foot.  I  should  not  be  surprised 
to  find  out  that  Lazarus  is  not  infrequently  a  selfish,  mean- 
spirited,  lazy,  blatant  cur  enough;  and  Dives  a  hard-work 
ing  and  generous  old  gentleman,  notwithstanding  the  luxu 
ries  with  which  he  has  had  the  bad  taste  to  surround  himself. 

"  I  wouldn't  be  in  Gwynne's  boots  for  a  good  deal,"  Nathan 
said  to  his  friend  Sharpless  afterwards;  "he  can't  do  anybody 
a  good  turn  without  some  one  hinting  he  has  an  axe  to  grind. 
It's  sad;  you'd  like  to  believe  in  him  and  people  won't  let  you. 
I  never  have  felt  any  leaning  towards  a  political  career,  and 
now  I  feel  less  than  ever." 

"Oh,  bosh!  I  believe  he  has  taken  a  fancy  to  you,  and 
really  likes  to  have  you  in  the  office.  Take  him  at  his  face 
value  —  you  don't  lose  anything  by  it,"  said  Jim,  warmly. 
He  had  a  stangh  faith  in  Burke's  winning  gifts  and  per 
sonality. 

Jim  was  up  and  about  now,  and  back  at  his  queer,  random, 
nondescript  work  of  journalism  long  before  this,  the  sight  of 


THE   BAR   RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     263 

him  in  renewed  health  having  been  welcomed  by  his  motley 
crew  of  acquaintances  with  a  fervor  that  both  touched  and 
gratified;  and  these  latter,  under  Jim's  energetic  leadership, 
had  been  of  no  slight  assistance  to  Burke  in  his  inquiry. 
Their  quarters  were  a  little  lonesome  without  his  mother's 
kind  and  gracious  presence.  Mrs.  Sharpless  had  gone  back 
to  the  parsonage.  And  Miss  Mary  Sharpless  no  longer 
appeared  of  an  afternoon,  daintily  picking  her  way  along  the 
squalid  cobblestones,  lighting  the  dingy  precincts  like  a  star 
(this  is  what  Mr.  Burke  poetically  fancied,  but  prudently 
never  said),  passing  through  the  rabble  of  livery-stable  hands 
and  coarse  suds-splashing  women,  and  dreadful  dirty  little 
rowdy  boys,  and  flea-harassed  dogs,  and  desperate  slinking 
cats,  and  weird,  witch-like,  scuttling  hens  —  passing  through 
untainted  and  serene  like  the  Lady  in  Milton's  poem,  Burke 
thought.  Strangely  enough,  the  neighbors,  who  had  all  be 
come  charitably  or  inquisitively  interested  in  Jim's  illness, 
regarding  his  recovery  or  bleath  equally  as  a  Heaven-sent 
sensation,  paid  very  little  attention  to  Mary's  arrival  or 
departure  in  comparison  to  the  sentiment  which  her  mother 
aroused.  I  am  sure  the  livery-stable  man  would  not  have 
loaned  his  carriage  for  Miss  Sharpless.  A  child  next  door 
named  Mrs.  Sharpless  "  the  lady  that  makes  the  pretty  little 
walkings,"  by  which  it  meant  her  small  foot-prints  through 
the  slush  and  mud,  and  used  to  get  in  her  way,  and  hold  to  her 
skirts,  unrebuked,  with  sticky  little  paws,  and  howl  dismally 
when  she  passed  out  of  sight.  The  youngster  never  did  aught 
but  stare  and  pout  at  Mary,  whose  " walkings"  were  even 
smaller  and  prettier  than  her  mother's;  the  other  children 
made  faces  and  ran  away,  rather  to  the  young  lady's  relief, 
I  dare  say.  "  They  're  so  horribly  dirty,  poor  little  things  !" 
she  explained  to  Nathan,  drawing  her  delicate  petticoats 
aside.  Mrs.  Slaney  sniffed  lamentably  the  whole  day  Mrs. 
Sharpless  left,  and  the  laundress  across  the  street  and  the 
charwoman  who  lived  in  two  rooms  over  the  laundress  came 
and  drank  tea  and  sniffed  with  her.  They  used  to  run  after 
Nat  and  stop  him  on  the  street  to  ask  after  Jim's  mother. 
Nobody  ever  inquired  about  Mary.  "It's  because  she's 
young  and  pretty  —  the  women  can  forgive  each  other  any 
thing  but  that,"  Burke  said  to  himself,  a  trifle  bitterly,  re 
viewing  his  recent  experience  with  the  sex. 


264  NATHAN    BURKE 

The  fact  that  he  himself  could  seldom  see  Mary  now,  and 
that  other  men  enjoyed  that  privilege  —  being  no  more 
worthy,  by  heavens,  than  Nat  Burke  !  —  and  might  be  tak 
ing  advantage  of  it  to  make  all  kinds  of  love  to  her,  occa 
sionally  produced  in  the  young  gentleman  moods  of  terrific 
cynicism  and  melancholy,  when  he  was  dark,  gloomy,  and 
sarcastic  to  a  degree  that  filled  his  fellow-clerks  and  students 
with  wonder  and  suspicion.  Fortunately  he  had  too  much 
to  do  and  was  too  heartily  interested  in  his  work  to  be  dream 
ing  of  his  lady-love  all  the  time,  —  no  sane,  healthy  man 
ever  did  that,  no,  nor  even  a  fifth  nor  a  tenth  part  of  his 
time,  for  that  matter.  And  Burke  had  the  weakest  possible 
foundation  for  dreams  anyhow.  He  had  never  held  Mary's 
hand  a  second  longer  or  with  a  shade  closer  pressure  than 
civility  regulates  nor  uttered  a  word  other  than  the  most 
diluted  generalities  on  the  subject  nearest  his  heart.  He 
could  not  help  looking  at  her,  watching  her  —  was  she 
aware  of  it  ?  The  glance  of  her  gray  eyes  under  those  be 
wildering  long  black  lashes  brought  the  blood  to  the  young 
fellow's  face,  set  his  heart  thumping  like  a  trip-hammer  — 
did  Ma,ry  know  that?  The  faint  shell-pink  in  her  cheeks 
never  changed;  unquestionably  her  heart  beat  no  faster 
than  any  well-behaved  girl's  should.  Her  slim  hands  never 
faltered  on  the  piano-keys  —  and  there  was  that  donkey 
of  a  Nathan  clumsily  turning  the  music  for  her  —  all  in  the 
wrong  places,  no  doubt,  which  she  bore  with  an  angelic  pa 
tience  —  in  such  a  fluster  as  he  bent  over  her  neatly  woven 
black  braids  that  be  could  scarcely  breathe !  She  sang  for 
him  in  her  sweet,  fluty  voice,  with  all  sorts  of  quavers  and 
grace-notes,  those  self-same  insipid,  sentimental,  mawkish 
ditties  which  Nat  had  heard  performed  by  various  belles 
in  Mrs.  Ducey's  parlor  —  which  he  had  heard  and  abhorred. 
There  he  sat,  the  simpleton,  and  listened  entranced.  Did 
Mary  know  that  she  had  fascinated  him,  and  did  she  en 
courage  him  ?  Who  am  I  that  I  should  fathom  these  mys 
teries  ?  And  if  she  had,  would  it  have  been  any  great  harm  ? 

But  these  delightful  times  were  all  over  and  done  with 
now,  since  the  ladies  had  no  longer  any  occasion  to  visit  Jim, 
and  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless's  embargo  was  revived  and 
active.  The  flinty  old  man  persevered  in  his  self-appointed 
way;  there  was  something  inconceivably  childish,  incon- 


THE   BAR  RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     265 

ceivably  deliberate  and  mature  about  it.  He  passed  his 
son  in  the  street,  looking  him  full  in  the  face  —  for  he  would 
stoop  to  no  tricks,  and  scorned  to  make  pretences  —  without 
sign  of  recognition.  "How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Burke  ?"  he  said 
in  his  rotund,  oratorical  voice,  and  went  on,  erect  and  stern. 
Jim  looked  after  him,  both  distress  and  amusement  in  his 
expression.  "He  suffers  for  that,  Nathan,"  he  said  as  they 
walked  away;  "and  am  I  helped  by  it  ?  Not  at  all.  Father 
is  trying  to  be  consistent,  at  any  rate;  he's  doing  now  what 
he'll  have  to  do  through  all  eternity,  according  to  his  creed. 
The  blessed  can't  take  any  notice  of  the  damned,  can  they  ? 
It  would  be  uncomfortable  and  dispiriting  and  likely  to  get 
on  one's  nerves  to  see  an  acquaintance  toasting  over  a  brisk 
fire,  stimulated  by  a  handy  imp  or  two,  I  should  think.  The 
contradiction  is  that  father  expects  to  be  happy  eternally 
doing  the  very  thing  that  makes  him  unhappy  here  !  Have 
you  seen  my  mother  or  Mary  lately?" 

"Why,  no  —  I  —  I  don't  go  there,  you  know,"  said  Nat, 
a  little  confused.  The  truth  was  he  had  taken  it  for  granted 
that  he  was  outside  the  pale  with  Jim  himself;  and  gone 
back  uncomplainingly  to  his  previous  devices  of  lingering 
about  in  the  back  of  church,  altering  his  course  to  pass  the 
Sharpless  home,  and  keeping  a  watch  for  Mary  on  the  street. 
He  always  got  a  smile  and  nod  from  her  now;  quite  often 
she  would  stop  and  speak  to  him.  The  conversation  was 
invariably  directed  upon  Jim  or  her  mother,  or  the  weather, 
or  something  equally  impersonal,  to  be  sure  —  but  upon 
Mary's  lips  the  simple  statement  that  two  and  two  make 
four  would  have  possessed  an  indefinable  charm  for  Burke. 

"Why  not?"  Jim  asked  him.  "I  wish  you  would  some 
times  —  just  to  keep  me  in  closer  touch  with  them.  John 
Vardaman  goes  once  in  a  while;  but  of  course  he's  pretty 
busy  with  his  practice,  and  then  John  doesn't  seem  to  care 
much  about  going  to  see  girls  any  more.  I  don't  know 
whether  he'll  ever  get  over  that  other  business  —  mother 
told  you,  didn't  she?  Jack's  a  good  fellow  —  I  wish  he 
would  marry  Mary,"  said  Jim,  in  a  tone  that  moved  Burke 
to  ask  in  a  painstakingly  firm  and  clear  voice  if  there  had 
been  any  talk  of  such  a  match? 

"Yes, —  a  little.  Not  in  the  family,  you  know.  Neither 
one  of  'em  has  ever  said  anything,  and  I'm  sure  John's  never 


266  NATHAN    BURKE 

asked  her  —  but  people  will  talk  around  —  one  can't  help 
hearing  gossip.  I'd  be  glad  of  it  —  not  because  John  has 
independent  means,  you  know  - 

"As  if  I  thought  that!" 

"Well,  Nat,  it's  not  such  a  bad  thing,  as  the  world  goes," 
said  Jim,  surprised  at  the  other's  vehemence;  "somehow 
I  think  Mary  would  be  likely  to  fall  in  love  with  some  fellow 
that  had  money.  Mary's  got  her  feelings  pretty  well  under 
control.  She's  not  mercenary,  of  course,  —  but  why,  a 
man  with  money  generally  has  the  best  of  it  with  girls.  But 
Jack  Vardaman  has  a  hundred  good  qualities  to  recommend 
him,  even  if  he  hadn't  a  cent." 

"Yes,  he  has!"  said  poor  Nat,  miserably.  What  chance 
would  he  have  with  a  man  like  Vardaman  in  the  race  ?  He, 
at  least,  would  be  a  fit  husband  for  her,  Burke  thought  with 
a  sigh,  a  fine  and  kindly  man,  an  educated,  travelled,  talented 
gentleman.  There  was  a  vast  difference  between  the  doctor 
and  that  good-looking  popinjay  of  an  Andrews  who,  any 
how,  was  married  right  and  tight  and  safely  out  of  the  way. 
Mary  had  not  wanted  him  with  all  his  money,  or  expecta 
tions,  Nat  said  to  himself  with  a  glow  of  tender  pride  in 
this  vindication  of  her  disinterestedness.  Evidently  Jim 
did  not  understand,  never  would  understand  her,  for  all  his 
cleverness  and  his  swift  sympathy.  Nathan  tried  to  think 
of  Vardaman  without  jealousy;  what  more  ought  he  to  ask 
than  that  Mary  should  be  happy  ? 

Burke  was  somewhat  surprised  to  discover  that  ex-Gov 
ernor  Gwynne's  practice,  which  he  had  supposed  was  con 
cerned  only  with  large  transactions  and  weighty  people,  em 
braced,  on  the  contrary,  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and 
every  variety  of  legal  business.  No  fish  seemed  to  be  too  small 
for  that  net  which  Gwynne  was  eternally  spreading :  democ 
racy —  equality  —  simplicity  —  were  his  slogan;  I  have 
seen  him  borrow  a  chew  of  tobacco  (which  he  loathed)  of  an 
humble  constituent ;  he  would  have  worn  hob-nail  boots  and 
gone  without  his  collar  had  that  been  agreeable  to  his  ideas 
of  personal  dignity  and  cleanliness.  To  Burke  there  was 
something  painful  in  this  weakness  of  a  strong  man;  in  every 
other  act  of  his  life  the  governor  displayed  a  good  mind,  a 
high  character,  unimpeachable  honesty;  but  ambition, 


THE   BAR   RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     267 

which  makes  some  men  heroes,  made  him  only  feeble  and 
sometimes  a  little  ridiculous.  In  the  office  every  one  took 
a  hand  at  bolstering  up  this  fictitious  republicanism;  the 
man  who  wanted  to  replevin  a  drove  of  hogs  was  laboriously 
made  to  feel  as  important  and  necessary  as  any  member  of 
those  deputations  of '  capitalists  who  desired  to  take  the  legal 
steps  for  incorporating  this,  bonding  that,  entering  suit 
against  the  other.  These  latter  dignitaries,  it  is  true,  were 
always  ushered  at  once  into  the  rear  office,  a  handsomely 
appointed  room  where  the  eminent  counsel  sat  in  elegant 
retirement,  very  different  from  the  free-and-easy  quarters 
of  old  George  Marsh  farther  down  the  street.  Whereas 
the  wronged  proprietor  of  the  hogs  had  to  be  content  with 
the  outer  office  and  the  advice  of  Mr.  Gilbert  Gwynne  — 
who,  however,  always  laid  the  case  before  his  uncle  (so  he 
said)  and  secured  the  governor's  carefully  weighed  opinion 
before  taking  any  kind  of  action.  Gilbert  was  a  conscientious 
henchman.  Once  in  a  while  the  Honorable  Samuel  Gwynne 
himself  came  forth  and  shook  hands  with  the  farmers 
and  drovers  and  inquired  after  their  wives  and  families  and 
everybody  in  their  neighborhood  to  the  third  and  fourth 
generation.  These  outer  precincts  were  themselves  well 
supplied  in  a  solid  plain  style  with  desks  and  arm-chairs  and 
glazed  book-cases  along  the  walls.  Archer  Lewis,1  who  was 
a  sprightly  young  man,  about  Burke's  own  age,  of  a  quick, 
bright  mind  and  most  genial  temper,  prosecuted  his  studies 
with  a  fair  amount  of  zeal  at  one  of  the  desks;  and  Steven 
Gwynne,  a  cousin  or  distant  relative  of  the  governor's,  some 
times  occupied  the  other.  He  was  a  talkative,  erratic  sort 
of  fellow,  good-looking,  and  rather  dull  in  an  extraordinary 
fashion,  not  without  humor  and  some  kindliness,  and  a  good 
deal  of  harmless  conceit.  The  young  men,  who  already 
knew  Burke,  welcomed  him  heartily;  Gilbert  Gywnne 
examined  him  and  directed  his  studies  —  under  the  govern 
or's  explicit  advice,  as  he  did  not  fail  to  tell  Nathan,  who 
reported  some  of  these  proceedings,  grinning,  to  his  inti 
mates.  Dr.  Vardaman  used  to  hail  him  on  the  street, 
and  inquire  with  a  severe  face  how  far  he  had  progressed  in 
the  "  ingenuous  arts"  and  whether  Governor  Gwynne  had 

1  Still  living  (1884)  and  my  very  good  friend.  —  N.  B. 


268  NATHAN    BURKE 

succeeded  in  " mollifying  his  manners"  yet.  "You  can 
supply  the  rest  of  the  quotation,  of  course,"  says  Jack,  pom 
pously.  And  Nat,  thinking  of  the  farmers  and  drovers 
with  their  rough  boots  and  their  red  worsted  comforters  and 
their  big  red  knuckles  and  their  plug-tobacco,  had  to  laugh. 
Indeed,  these  plain  clients  of  the  governor's  rather  affected 
Mr.  Burke's  company;  they  liked  him,  albeit  he  never 
chewed  with  them,  nor  asked  after  the  wives  and  babies; 
many  of  them  remembered  him  from  the  old  days,  or  from 
his  association  with  Mr.  Marsh.  When  they  happened 
upon  him  at  odd  times  and  seasons  in  the  Gwynne  office, 
they  opened  their  troubles  with  an  amazing  freedom  and 
confidence;  he  could  argue  them  into  a  better  frame  of  mind 
and  an  amicable  settlement  with  a  facility,  patience,  and 
good-temper  which  attracted  Gilbert  Gwynne's  favorable 
notice,  although,  Heaven  knows,  it  was  no  great  feat  nor  was 
Nat  particularly  gifted.  He  possessed  the  chance-bestowed 
advantage  of  being  one  of  these  people  by  birth  and  inheri 
tance,  and  of  thoroughly  understanding  their  point  of  view; 
he  could  meet  them  on  their  own  ground  and  speak  their 
shibboleth.  He  knew  in  intimate  detail  the  whole  of  their 
hard,  simple  lives,  having  so  lived  himself;  all  their  desires, 
standards,  prejudices,  loves,  and  hates  he  knew,  fashioned  his 
discourse  accordingly,  and  touched  with  them  at  a  hundred 
unconsidered  points.  Often  they  had  that  common  remem 
brance  which  is  one  of  the  most  enduring  of  ties.  "  Ain't 
you  John  Burke's  son?"  one  middle-aged  backwoodsman 
asked  him ;  and  for  a  moment  this  plaintiff  —  he  had  some 
grievance  about  a  culvert  and  a  right-of-way  —  forgot  his 
cause,  and  they  talked  of  the  Scioto  and  the  Olentanjy,  and 
the  old  Smoky-Row  Road  where  he  lived,  and  of  John  Burke 
and  Jake  Darnell  whom  he  had  known,  and  of  the  young 
mother  whom  Nathan  himself  could  not  remember.  "Ye 
favor  yer  pap  some,"  said  the  other;  "but  I  guess  yeh  take 
after  yer  maw's  fambly  most.  Yer  maw  she  had  real  light 
hair  —  she  was  a  Granger.  Her  folks  come  from  Canady, 
I've  heern  tell.  I  reckon  they  was  Refugees,  wa'n't  they  ? 
They  useter  tell  how  th'  Gov'ment  give  a  place  fer  ter  live 
—  a  right  smart  bit  of  land  —  to  every  Britisher  that  moved 
in  here  from  Canady,  er  'crost  th'  lakes  endurin'  th'  war 
times.  'Twas  a  kinder  indoocement,  yeh  might  say,  en  a 


THE   BAR   RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     269 

whole  pilin'  lot  of  'em  come.  That  was  why  they  called  'em 
Refugees,  V  they  called  th'  land  th'  Refugee  Track.  Least 
ways  I  rec'lect  'em  tellin'  'bout  it  when  I  was  a  boy.  'Pears 
like  th'  Track  was  located  round  here  somewheres.  How 
was  that,  anyhow?"  On  being  told  that  the  city  was  built 
upon  part  of  this  historic  ground  —  "I  swanny,  yeh  don't 
say!"  he  ejaculated  in  a  sort  of  meditative  surprise;  "well, 
then,  it  was  true  after  all.  I  alluz  kinder  j edged  it  might  be 
one  of  these  stories  folks  like  to  tell.  Yeh  ain't  ben  out  ter 
th'  country  much  recent,  hev  ye?  Not  in  ten  years,  some 
body  was  tellin'  me.  'Course,  not  havin'  any  kin  there,  yeh 
wouldn't  be  likely  to."  Burke,  coloring,  and  a  little  ashamed, 
had  to  admit  it  —  but  it  wasn't  quite  so  long,  between  six 
and  seven  years,  that  was  all  —  and  of  course  he  meant  to 
ride  out  to  the  Williamses  and  look  everybody  up  sometime 
soon,  oh,  very  soon  —  next  summer,  he  guessed.  And  then 
Governor  Gwynne,  having  doubtless  been  notified  by  the 
vigilant  Gilbert,  came  out  and  greeted  his  client  warmly, 
and  said  some  very  kind  and  agreeable  things  about  Burke 
that  made  the  young  man  redden  again  for  pure  pleasure  — 
for,  conceited  or  not,  I  believe  for  once  the  governor  meant 
them. 

"Who  were  your  people  anyway,  Burke?"  young  Lewis 
asked  him  afterwards,  not  at  all  inquisitively,  but  with  a 
genuine  interest.  "Don't  you  know  anything  about  'em? 
I  was  looking  up  a  title  the  other  day  —  it  was  a  piece  of 
property  where  the  tannery  is,  you  know,  that  James  Hunt 
&  Sons  bought  of  Mr.  Marsh  —  and  it  went  back  to  a  man 
named  Granger.  By  George,  his  name  was  Nathan,  too,  I 
remember  !  Was  he  a  relative  ?  " 

"Might  have  been  —  you  can't  prove  it  by  me,"  said  Nat, 
who,  perhaps,  had  had  sundry  similar  experiences  in  the 
course  of  his  legal  labors;  "Granger's  not  an  uncommon 
name,  nor  Burke  either,  for  that  matter.  I've  never  bothered 
much  about  my  family — "  and  seeing  the  other  look  at 
him  a  little  curiously,  he  added,  half-apologetic  and  half- 
defiant:  "I'm  not  saying  I  don't  care,  you  know.  But  I  — 
well,  I  don't  take  the  time  to  think  about  it.  I'm  too  busy." 

"You're  a  self-made  man,  that's  what  you  are,  Nat," 
said  his  friend,  soberly. 

There  came  a  day  at  last,  when,  without  any  beating  of 


270  NATHAN    BURKE 

cymbals  or  braying  of  trumpets,  mighty  as  the  event  seemed 
in  his  own  eyes,  Mr.  Burke  was  admitted  into  that  great 
and  noble  Temple  of  Jurisprudence  (as  he  had  heard  Gov 
ernor  Gwynne  call  it)  in  the  outer  porticos  whereof  he  had  so 
long  been  laboring;  and  stood  for  the  third  and  final  time 
in  his  life  upon  the  threshold  of  a  career.  The  United  States 
Court  on  circuit  was  in  its  spring  session,  and  the  court 
(Judge  Swan)  appointed  Mr.  Mease  Smith  and  Mr.  Bur 
roughs,  whose  names  will  be  well  remembered  by  the  bar  of 
this  State,  to  examine  the  candidate.  Burke  went  with 
these  gentlemen  (who  were  chatting  together  in  a  very  light- 
minded  and  unconcerned  style,  considering  the  solemnity  of 
the  occasion)  into  a  little  room  opening  off  the  marshal's 
office  to  the  right  of  the  door  as  you  entered  the  old  Court 
house,  which  was  still  in  use  at  this  time.  And  having 
managed  to  answer  their  questions  in  a  tolerably  clear 
headed  and  concise  manner,  the  clerk  was  called  in  and  ac 
cording  to  the  informal  fashion  of  that  day,  then  and  there, 
during  March  term,  A.D.  184—,  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
State  of  Ohio,  Nathan  Burke,  Esq.,  was  certified  and  licensed 
to  practise  as  Attorney  and  Counsellor  at  Law  and  Solicitor 
in  Chancery  in  the  Several  Courts  of  this  State  —  "and  may 
the  Lord  have  mercy  on  your  soul!"  said  one  of  his  judges, 
in  a  hollow  voice,  observing,  it  may  be,  the  gravity  of  the 
young  fellow's  expression;  and  both  gentlemen  laughed  aloud 
and  shook  his  hand  and  wished  him  success. 

Nat  went  out  and  stood  at  the  top  of  the  Court-house 
steps ;  it  was  a  bright  and  blowing  day,  and  the  face  of  Nature 
being  nowise  changed,  notwithstanding  the  recent  event, 
he  took  for  a  good  omen  this  cheerful  sky.  Judge  Burke 
—  Attorney-general  Burke  —  Chief-justice  Burke  —  what 
heights  did  he  not  scale  in  that  triumphant  moment !  As 
he  stood,  Jim  Sharpless  and  Vardaman  came  walking  to 
gether  from  the  direction  of  the  doctor's  office,  and,  glanc 
ing  up,  halted,  struck,  no  doubt,  by  something  in  Burke's 
air,  for  they  had  known  he  was  going  to  present  himself  for 
admittance  shortly. 

"What,  Nathan !  Hail,  Nathan ! "  said  the  doctor,  waving 
his  cane;  but  Jim,  who  possessed  a  quick  almost  woman 
ish  intuition  in  these  matters,  ran  up  the  steps  and 
seized  his  friend's  hands.  "Is  it  all  over,  Nat?  Is  it  over? 


THE   BAR   RECEIVES   A   NOTABLE   ADDITION     271 

Have  you  passed?"  he  cried  out.  Nat  told  him,  pleased, 
proud,  touched.  There  was  another  great  time  of  shaking 
hands,  and  Vardaman  fell  into  a  burlesque  attitude  and 
shouted  out,  "Hie  labor  extremis,  hie  meta  longarum  viarum!" 
in  a  tremendous  bellow  to  the  astonishment  of  the  passers- 
by.  Longarum  viarum  indeed!  Nobody  but  Burke  knew 
how  long  had  been  that  way. 

During  these  congratulations  there  emerged  from  the  doors 
of  the  Erin-go-Bragh  across  the  way,  lo,  that  very  same 
stout,  short,  and  jocund  gentleman  upon  whose  hint  Burke 
had  begun  his  studies  some  three  or  four  years  ago;  and 
whom,  in  fact,  the  young  man  had  seen  many  times  since  at 
lawyers'  offices  or  at  the  Court-house,  where  he  might  be 
arguing  a  case  with  a  great  deal  of  vigor,  acuteness,  and 
power  of  persuasion.  He  now  came  across  the  street,  eying 
them  gravely,  so  that  Burke  gave  him  a  sort  of  tentative 
salute.  Upon  that  the  other  stopped  short.  "You  have  the 
advantage  of  me,  sir,"  he  said  very  pleasantly;  "yet  your 
face  is  perfectly  familiar.  I  suppose  we  have  met?" 

They  had  met,  and  Burke  reminded  him  how  and  when  — 
judiciously  leaving  out  some  details  —  in  a  slight  confusion, 
adding  that  he  had  acted  on  the  other's  advice. 

"What!"  ejaculated  the  lawyer,  and  smiled.  "I  builded 
better  than  I  knew.  You've  just  been  admitted,  hey? 
What?  Now?  This  moment?"  He  walked  up  to  Nat 
and  prodded  him  on  the  chest  with  a  rigid  forefinger.  "Ahem ! 
Mr.  Burke,"  said  he,  profoundly,  "what  is  Law?" 

"Well,  I'll  be  damned  if  I  know!"  said  the  young  fellow, 
happy  and  reckless.  "  Will  you  come  and  have  a  drink,  sir  ?  " 

"Young  man,  I  never  drink!"  said  the  other,  majestically; 
and  walked  off  with  a  mighty  flourish,  laughing  his  loud, 
jolly  laugh. 


CHAPTER  XX 

CONTAINS  SOME  BUSINESS  AND  A  GOOD  DEAL  OF  PLEASURE 

THE  right  to  put  " esquire"  after  his  name,  which  he  had 
striven  so  earnestty  to  acquire  —  although,  indeed,  he  might 
have  adorned  himself  with  that  title  at  any  time  without 
attracting  much  notice  —  was,  I  am  pained  to  state,  almost 
all  that  Mr.  Burke  got  out  of  his  late  elevation  for  some 
three  or  four  months  thereafter.  He  rented  a  little  room  up 
one  pair  of  stairs  over  a  shoemaker's  shop  in  a  two-story 
frame  building  on  Gay  Street  just  off  of  High;  installed  a 
deal  table,  a  couple  of  chairs,  and  a  case  of  shelves  which  he 
knocked  together  with  his  own  trusty  right  arm  and  hand 
and  hammer  out  of  an  old  packing-box  got  from  the  store; 
hired  a  sign-painter  to  do  him  a  foot-square  board  with  his 
name  and  profession  tidily  exhibited  thereon,  and  affixed 
it  to  the  wall  at  the  bottom  of  the  stairs;  and,  finally,  in 
serted  a  card  in  the  paper  (it  was  the  universal  custom  in  my 
youth),  informing  the  public  that  Nathan  Burke,  Att'y-at- 
Law  and  Notary  Public,  had  opened  an  office  in  the  above 
described  locality,  estates  settled,  collections  promptly 
attended  to,  referred  by  permission  to  the  Hon'ble  Samuel 
Gwynne,  George  Marsh,  Esq.,  etc.  And  having  taken  all 
these  important  steps,  there  the  young  gentleman  sat  in 
uninterrupted  leisure  for  the  space  of  time  I  have  mentioned, 
improving  his  shining  hours  by  a  close  review  of  what  books 
he  had  or  could  borrow,  and  wondering  intermittently  if 
an  era  of  world-wide  peace  had  set  in,  to  the  extinction  of 
all  legal  industry.  Fortunately  he  had  always  been  a  thrifty 
youth,  accustomed  to  a  sparing  way  of  life,  so  that  he  was 
tolerably  well  fortified  against  this  lean  period;  and  being 
of  a  confident  and  soberly  cheerful  temper,  had  no  fears  for 
the  future.  "  Oh,  yes,  I've  got  to  live  pretty  close,"  he  said 
in  answer  to  a  question  from  his  ancient  friend  and  employer, 
Mr.  Marsh;  " but  that's  not  worrying  me  any.  If  I  can't 

272 


CONTAINS   BUSINESS   AND   PLEASURE      273 

make  out  at  the  law,  I  can  always  get  a  job  chopping  wood, 
I  guess." 

He  had  parted  from  the  old  man  on  the  best  of  terms,  and 
with  hearty  good  wishes  on  both  sides.  Mr.  Marsh  never 
held  out  any  inducements  for  Burke  to  remain,  or  expressed 
any  particular  liking  for  him,  or  satisfaction  with  his  work, 
or,  to  sum  up,  treated  him  otherwise  than  with  an  impartial 
respect  and  justice;  for  all  that,  he  took  in  his  way  an  in 
terest  in  Burke's  fortunes,  showing  it  toward  the  close  of  their 
association  in  a  dozen  rough  yet  kindly  speeches  and  acts. 
He  never  saw  the  young  fellow  on  the  street  without  stop 
ping  to  ask  how  he  was  getting  on,  his  old  eyes  twinkling  a 
little,  in  response,  perhaps,  to  some  expression  on  Nat's  own 
face  —  for  they  had  grown  to  know  each  other  very  well  — 
as  the  latter  gravely  informed  him  that  he  was  not  busy  at 
the  moment.  The  boys  at  the  store,  when  they  came  around 
to  see  the  new  attorney  —  which  they  did  quite  often  in  the 
beginning,  out  of  mingled  curiosity  and  friendliness  —  re 
ported  that  Mr.  Marsh  was  actually  almost  enthusiastic  in 
recommending  Burke  to  the  customers  who  might  be  need 
ing  a  lawyer's  services.  They  missed  Nathan  a  good  deal, 
they  said  —  was  he  making  as  much  at  law  as  he  had  at 
bookkeeping  for  Marsh?  "Not  yet,"  Nat  told  them  with 
a  grin.  Kellar  had  Nat's  place  now  —  the  king  is  dead, 
long  live  the  king !  —  so  funny,  they  all  kept  calling  Kellar, 
"Nat,"  just  out  of  habit,  you  know.  Mr.  Ducey  had  won 
five  hundred  dollars  in  the  Alexandria  Lottery  —  had  Burke 
heard  ?  And  they  wouldn't  wonder  if  Mr.  Marsh  was  going 
to  draw  out  of  the  business  before  long  and  leave  it  all  to 
Ducey,  sure  enough.  "You  don't  say  so!"  ejaculated  Na 
than,  in  astonishment;  "oh,  that  must  be  a  mistake.  Why 
the  place  can't  go  on  —  that  is,  you  can't  imagine  its  going 
on  without  Marsh!" 

"Well,  that's  what  I've  been  hearing  steady  —  don't 
know  how  true  it  is,"  said  his  informant;  "of  course  you  can't 
tell  anything  from  the  way  old  George  acts  himself.  He's 
awfully  close-mouthed  when  he  wants  to  be.  But  he's 
getting  pretty  old,  Nat.  Every  day  of  seventy-five  I  guess. 
I  notice  he  ain't  near  as  spry  this  last  year;  he  kind  of  drags 
his  feet  a  little  when  he  walks;  sometimes  he  don't  get  down 
to  the  store  till  way  late  in  the  morning.  He's  beginning 


274  NATHAN    BURKE 

to  break  up,  I  wouldn't  wonder ;  people  notice  it,  you 
know." 

"/  haven't  noticed  it,"  said  Burke,  stoutly.  He  disliked 
to  think  of  the  sturdy  old  man  in  decay;  Marsh  had  been 
Nat's  first  patron;  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  define 
the  sentiment  the  young  man  felt  for  him.  And  it  was,  be 
sides,  impossible  to  figure  this  ancient  hero  of  a  hundred 
hard-fought  commercial  battles  in  retirement.  What  would 
he  do  with  himself,  Burke  mused.  How  would  he  put  in 
the  long  day?  I  don't  believe  George  Marsh  ever  read  a 
book  in  his  life,  or  played  a  game,  or  went  to  see  a  friend  except 
on  some  business  errand.  Would  he  smoke  a  pipe  in  the 
chimney-corner,  and  wander  out  for  a  walk  once  in  a  while, 
and  grow  querulous  and  complaining  about  draughts  and 
meals  and  medicine,  and  presently  rust  away  like  an  old 
disused  weapon  —  Nathan  hastily  averted  his  mind. 

In  spite  of  the  reports,  however,  there  seemed  to  be  no 
present  danger  of  all  this  happening.  Old  George  appeared 
at  his  place  of  business  every  day  as  heretofore;  and  it  was 
he  who  sent  Nathan  his  first  client.  This  case  —  which, 
alas,  Mr.  Burke  lost! — was  that  of  a  market-gardener 
who  had  shipped  twenty-one  barrels  of  apples  to  somewhere 
by  the  canal;  and  they  had  all  got  frozen  and  spoiled,  owing, 
the  farmer  thought,  and  his  lawyer  contended,  to  inadequate 
provision  for  their  shelter  on  the  road.  Jim  Sharpless  used 
to  represent,  with  impressive  gestures  and  a  deep  rolling  voice, 
the  dramatic  scene  in  the  court-room  when  counsel  for  the 
plaintiff  arose  to  make  his  plea  —  "This  gifted  young  man's 
touching  description  of  the  sufferings  of  the  unfortunate 
apples,  shivering  and  huddled  together  beneath  the  wretched 
shanty  into  which  an  inhuman  warehouse-keeper  had  thrust 
them  in  the  dead  of  winter  without  fire  or  light,  moved  the 
hardest  heart  to  pity  and  sympathy.  And  when  he  reached 
his  peroration,  which  for  grace  of  style,  originality  of  thought, 
and  fervid  eloquence  surpasses  none  ever  before  heard  at 
our  bar,  there  was  not  one  eye  open  in  the  court-room!' 

The  unlucky  outcome,  however,  occasioned  poor  Jim, 
who  was  very  generous,  affectionate,  and  enthusiastic  about 
his  friend,  much  deeper  chagrin  than  was  felt  by  counsel  for 
the  plaintiff  himself.  "Why,  I  thought  you  were  going  to 
win,  Nat;  I  was  dead  certain  you  were  going  to  win,  or  I 


CONTAINS   BUSINESS   AND   PLEASURE      275 

never  would  have  made  fun  that  way  —  you  don't  mind, 
do  you,  old  fellow?"  he  said  earnestly;  "damn  it,  you  ought 
to  have  won.  I  never  saw  such  a  set  of  dunderheaded 
fools  as  that  jury!" 

"Why,  they  were  very  respectable  men  and  ordinarily 
intelligent,  I  thought,"  said  Burke,  philosophically;  "I'm 
not  expecting  to  win  every  time.  You've  got  to  take  the 
bad  with  the  good,  and  it  evens  up  in  the  end,  I  guess." 
And  in  support  of  this  theory  it  must  be  noted  that,  although 
worsted  in  his  suit,  Mr.  Burke  was,  on  the  whole,  favorably 
received  in  the  court-room,  and  made  so  good  an  impression 
that  some  one  shortly  after  sought  him  out  and  retained  him 
for  a  case  involving  a  lease  and  subrental,  which  Burke 
gained  this  time.  One  or  two  of  Governor  Gwynne's  care 
fully  cultivated  rustic  or  backwoods  patrons  discovered  him; 
he  got  a  payment  of  an  order  for  groceries  —  from  a  man  who 
had  a  suit  against  the  city  for  a  broken  leg  —  which  would 
have  kept  him,  as  he  was  of  rather  frugal  and  temperate  dis 
position,  for  the  rest  of  his  natural  life  ;  and  got  it  dis 
counted,  so  to  speak,  by  his  landlord,  the  shoemaker,  who 
happened  to  have  some  spare  cash.  "  I'm  beginning  the  tradi 
tional  way,"  said  Burke,  retailing  this  financial  transaction  to 
his  friends;  "  I  heard  Governor  Gwynne  telling  somebody  once 
that  his  first  fee  was  three  bushels  of  potatoes." 

"Ho,  they  used  to  get  that  sort  of  stuff  in  payment  for 
subscriptions  at  the  Journal  office  all  the  time,"  said  Jim; 
"bags  of  corn-meal  and  duck  and  quail  and  deer  in  season, 
hams  and  shoulders  —  tallow  candles  —  everything  you  can 
think  of,  even  patchwork  counterpanes.  People  don't  do 
that  way  so  much  nowadays,  though.  The  journalistic  pro 
fession,"  said  Jim,  pompously,  "is  looking  up  since  our  well 
born,  well-educated,  and  talented  youth  have  begun  to  enter 
it.  Although  we  cannot  but  deplore  Mr.  S — 's  opinions, 
we  must  at  least  allow  him,  etc.  etc."  He  laughed  as  he 
turned  to  his  writing;  he  had  quoted  the  last  words  from  a 
review  which  had  appeared  in  the  Gazette  not  long  before. 

There  had  been,  in  fact,  an  extraordinary  reversal  of  public 
opinion  regarding  Jim  the  last  year  or  so.  Nothing  succeeds 
like  success;  and  the  young  fellow's  readiness  of  pen,  his 
satirical  and  humorous  insight,  his  quick,  comprehensive 
vision  of  men  and  affairs,  had  lately  begun  to  make  him  a 


276  NATHAN    BURKE 

figure  of  some  prominence  in  our  small  literary  world.  We 
took  these  things  with  very  great  seriousness  in  those  days. 
During  the  legislative  sessions  Sharpless  was  correspondent 
for  half-a-dozen  papers  elsewhere  in  the  State;  he  had  got 
three  articles  accepted  by  the  American  Review,  "a  Whig 
Journal  devoted  to  Politics  and  Literature,"  which  was  pub 
lished  monthly  in  New  York  with  a  steel-engraving  of  some 
celebrity  for  a  frontispiece;  you  may  see  any  number  of 
J.  S.'s  contributions  within  the  pages  of  that  long  dead  and 
forgotten  magazine  during  the  decade  of  '40-'50.  Jim's 
essays  were  on  literary  subjects,  and  one,  at  least,  of  his 
readers  thought  them  by  far  the  most  pointed,  scholarly, 
and  withal  humane  that  the  American  Review  ever  pub 
lished.  And  that  winter  there  was  brought  out  (by  Messrs. 
Leavitt,  Throw  &  Co.,  of  33  Ann  Street,  New  York,  great 
purveyors  of  gift-books,  annuals,  and  so  on,  in  those  simple 
old  days)  a  little  volume  of  ''Translations  from  Ber anger, 
by  J.  S.,"  charmingly  gotten  up  with  a  white  cover  embossed 
with  blue  and  pink  and  silver  wreaths,  ribbons,  scrolls, 
flambeaux,  and  what-not  in  the  most  refined  and  fashionable 
taste;  it  had  its  steel-engraving,  too,  of  " Flora"  or  "Julia" 
or  "Zuleika"  or  some  such  romantic,  simpering  female 
facing  the  title-page  —  she  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
Beranger;  but  what  of  that?  No  book  of  this  nature  would 
have  been  complete  without  her,  with  her  grin  and  her 
languishing  eyes,  and  her  alarmingly  low-cut  bodice.  The 
book-sellers  assured  one  that  this  concoction  was  "just  the 
thing  for  a  gift  to  a  young  lady,  or  for  the  parlor-table."  One 
of  these  astute  gentlemen  advertised  it  in  a  review  as  by  our 
gifted  fellow-townsman !  It  sold  like  sixty,  like  hot  cakes, 
like  wildfire!  People  who  had  never  read  a  line  of  poetry 
in  their  lives,  nor  heard  of  Beranger,  nor  understood  a  word 
of  the  French  language,  so  that  they  were  wholly  incapable 
of  appreciating  the  incomparable  deftness  of  Jim's  English, 
bought  it  by  the  dozens.  In  a  short  while  Mr.  James  Sharp- 
less,  very  much  to  his  own  amusement,  found  himself  sud 
denly  rehabilitated  both  in  pocket  and  in  the  estimate  of 
society.  Who  shall  expound  these  mysteries  ?  Jim,  who 
up  till  now  had  been  a  reprehensible  vagabond,  foraging  in 
discreditable  places,  discoursing  unmentionable  heresies, 
knowing  impossible  people,  living  anyhow  and  everyhow, 


CONTAINS   BUSINESS   AND   PLEASURE       277 

shunned  by  all  respectability  like  the  plague  —  Jim  was  now 
become,  without  altering  a  single  one  of  his  habits  or  opinions, 
an  erratic,  brilliant,  companionable  fellow,  a  dreadful  Bohe 
mian,  but  so  original  and  so  talented  !  Female  society 
smiled  on  him  !  He  was  admitted  in  the  wake  of  his  little 
gilt  book  to  the  front-parlors  of  the  elect.  He  had  to  buy 
a  white  waistcoat  and  make  other  additions  to  his  Robert- 
Macaire  wardrobe.  The  young  ladies  who  owned  "Trans 
lations  from  Beranger  by  J.  S."  used  to  ask  him  prettily 
to  write  his  name  in  their  copies;  they  received  him  in  quite 
a  flutter  and  paraded  Mr.  Sharpless,  the  author,  before 
strangers  and  visitors;  and  were  perfectly  sure  that  he  was 
a  wild,  cynical,  irreligious  and  —  ahem!  —  yes,  let  us  say 
it  —  immoral  person  whom  it  was  dangerous  and  therefore 
highly  desirable  to  know. 

"I'm  quite  devilish  and  popular,"  Jim  would  say  with  his 
kind  satire;  "girls  I've  known  all  my  life  and  used  to  play 
with  when  we  were  children  have  all  at  once  discovered  that 
I  still  exist  —  after  having  cut  me  dead  for  years,  under 
their  mothers'  orders,  I  suppose.  But  all  the  mothers  re 
member  me  now.  It's  the  women  that  do  it,  after  all,  Nat. 
Men  know,  you  know,  Jack  Vardaman  knows,  that  I'm  just 
as  I've  always  been.  A  little  success  that,  by  heavens,  I've 
worked  hard  for  and  deserved,  doesn't  make  any  different  or 
better  man  of  me.  I  still  stick  to  my  monstrous  beliefs, 
and  if  I  don't  thrust  them  down  people's  throats,  why,  I 
never  have.  I  humbly  trust  that,  creedless  as  I  am,  I  live 
decently  and  cleanly  and  like  a  man.  But  the  women  can't 
believe  that,  and  upon  my  soul,  they  don't  want  to  believe 
it!  You'll  never  be  a  social  success,  Nat;  you've  got  such 
a  damning  reputation  for  steadiness  and  respectability.  If 
you'd  only  contrive  to  spread  abroad  a  rumor  of  your  terrible 
immoralities  and  seductions,  you'd  have  a  whole  army  of 
'em  after  you  to  reform  you." 

"I  shouldn't  want  a  whole  army  —  one  would  do  me," 
Burke  said  with  a  laugh.  "Your  mother  is  very  proud  of 
you,  Jim;  she  goes  around  with  the  dearest  little  I-told-you- 
so  air.  Does  your  father  ever  — ?" 

"No,  not  a  word,"  said  Jim.  He  looked  at  his  friend  with 
a  kind  of  regretful  pride  in  his  face.  "The  old  man  is  always 
consistent,  or  tries  to  be,  and  what's  more,  he's  right  this 


278  NATHAN    BURKE 

time,  Nathan.  If  I  were  President  Sharpless  in  the  White 
House  and  still  believed  as  I  do,  Jonathan  Edwards  Sharp- 
less  would  still  refuse  to  speak  to  me,  or  allow  me  under 
his  roof.  He'd  think  he'd  betrayed  his  Master,  if  he  coun 
tenanced  me.  I  tell  you,  Nat,  I'm  proud  of  him.  Who 
was  that  fellow  that  said  every  man  has  his  price  ?  If  he 
could  have  known  my  father,  he'd  have  changed  his  mind, 
I  think." 

If  he  could  have  known  the  son,  he  would  have  changed  his 
mind,  Burke  thought.  Prosperity  is  so  much  harder  a  test 
than  adversity  that,  if  Jim's  head  had  been  ever  so  little 
turned  by  all  the  notice  and  flattery  he  got,  it  would  not  have 
been  at  all  surprising.  But  he  remained  unspoiled  by  the 
one  as  by  the  other,  gay,  chivalrous,  and  kind,  pleased  with 
the  sunshine  as  he  had  been  indifferent  to  the  rain.  Varda- 
man  could  have  had  Jim  to  live  with  him  in  absolute  safety 
now.  "Most  remarkable  thing,  I  believe  he'd  increase  my 
practice!"  Jack  observed  with  a  false  air  of  simplicity.  He 
invited  us  to  dine  with  him  at  his  house  which  was  presided 
over  by  his  only  sister,  a  lady  some  few  years  older  than  the 
doctor,  and  looking  exactly  like  him  in  petticoats.  It  was 
a  type,  which,  however  passable  in  a  man,  was  not  suited 
to  the  accepted  ideas  of  feminine  attractiveness.  Miss  Clara 
Vardaman,  whom  I  know  to  have  been  a  most  sweet  and 
lovable  woman,  was  never  known  to  have  received  a  mo 
ment's  attention  from  any  male  human  being.  She  was 
rather  tall,  thin,  and  flat,  always  exquisitely  neat,  with  a 
gold  watch  and  chain  around  her  neck,  a  cluster  of  curls  in 
front  of  her  ears  on  either  cheek,  very  beautiful  small  hands 
and  feet,  of  which  she  was  harmlessly  vain,  I  think,  and  a 
manner  of  chilling  reserve,  due,  I  have  since  felt  convinced, 
to  extreme  and  painful  shyness.  I  have  heard  my  wife  say 
that  if  ever  the  Lord  cut  out  and  fashioned  a  woman  to  be 
an  old  maid,  it  was  Clara  Vardaman.  As  young  as  she 
was  at  this  time  —  not  more  than  thirty-four  or  thirty-five 
—  she  already  owned  a  parrot  and  a  poodle !  She  was  one 
of  the  most  immaculate  housekeepers  that  ever  stepped  in 
shoe-leather;  she  was  past  mistress  of  the  womanly  arts 
of  cooking  and  sewing;  she  worshipped  the  doctor  as  a  su 
perior  being,  measured  all  other  men  up  to  him,  and  if  any 
one  mentioned  So-and-So  as  being  a  good  husband  or  a 


CONTAINS   BUSINESS   AND   PLEASURE      279 

promising  young  man,  never  failed  to  remark  with  surprise: 
"  Why,  he's  not  at  all  like  Jack!"  Under  her  anxious  super 
vision  the  dinner  to  which  Dr.  Vardaman  invited  that 
rising  young  member  of  the  bar,  Mr.  Nathan  Burke,  and 
that  eminent  man  of  letters,  Mr.  James  Sharpless,  in  com 
pany  with  a  few  other  intimate  friends,  was  conducted  with 
a  magnificence  of  things  to  eat  and  things  to  drink  and  rich 
old  plate  and  china,  the  like  of  which  Mr.  Burke,  who  had 
recently  been  making  his  first  ventures  in  society,  had  never 
beheld  before.  I  dare  say  Miss  Vardaman  had  been  busy 
for  days  with  the  boned  turkey,  the  chicken  salad,  the  cus 
tards  and  jellies,  and  the  dozen  or  so  other  sweets  and  relishes 
which  crowded  the  table.  She  sat  at  its  head  behind  the 
great  old  silver  coffee-urn,  quite  silent  in  her  green  silk  dress, 
with  her  point-lace  collar,  with  the  handsome  garnet  neck 
lace  that  had  come  to  her  from  her  mother,  and  the  odd  old 
crown-set  diamonds  on  her  delicate  fingers,  thankfully 
watching  everybody  eat,  and  frowning  .dreadfully  when  the 
servant  dropped  a  fork,  and  nervously  smiling  at  her  brother's 
jokes,  which  she  could  not  understand,  but  which  she  was 
loyally  certain  must  be  very  funny.  She  did  not  laugh  at 
Jim's,  which  equally  she  did  not  understand  —  but  she  had 
a  secret  dread  that  they  might  be  evil-minded. 

"You  are  the  Mr.  Burke  that  Judge  Swan  was  talking 
about  the  other  day,  aren't  you?"  she  said  timidly  to  her 
right-hand  neighbor;  "he  said  you  handled  the  —  the  case, 
a  case  about  something,  I  —  I  don't  quite  remember  what, 
Mr.  Burke  —  but  he  said  you  handled  it  so  well." 

"Judge  Swan  has  always  been  very  kind  to  me,"  said  the 
gentleman. 

"Do  you  play  chess,  Mr.  Burke?  No?  Why,  how  odd  ! 
I  thought  you  were  so  clever.  Jack  plays  chess." 

And  this  was  the  extent  of  the  conversation.  Perhaps 
Mr.  Burke  himself  did  not  make  much  of  an  effort  to  sustain 
it;  he  had  just  caught  a  glance  from  Miss  Mary  Sharpless's 
large  and  lovely  gray  eyes  (across  the  pyramidal,  sparkling, 
cut-glass-and-silver  castor  in  the  middle  of  the  table)  that 
had  started  a  suffocating  commotion  under  his  white  shirt- 
front  and  crisp  satin  neck-scarf. 

"I  think  it's  perfectly  wonderful  your  being  able  to  speak 
French,  Mr.  Sharpless,"  said  Miss  Clara.  "Jack  speaks 


280  NATHAN   BURKE 

French  —  he's  been  there,  you  know.  But  Jack  can  do 
everything.  French  is  very  hard  —  all  those  awful  verbs. 
It  takes  a  very  bright  person,  I'm  sure.  I  don't  see  how 
you  ever  learned." 

"Why,  I  learned  of  a  drunken  old  fiddler  named  Jean- 
Baptiste  Leroux,  that  said  he  had  been  a  soldier  in  Napo 
leon's  army,  and  had  dreadful  tales  of  Jena  and  Waterloo," 
Jim  told  her.  "He  used  to  come  around  to  the  coffee-houses 
and  play  for  pennies,  and  I  got  to  know  him  quite  well." 
Miss  Vardaman  colored,  and  began  hastily  to  talk  about  the 
weather,  in  evident  fear  lest  Jim  might  embark  upon  some 
indiscreet  details  —  Frenchmen,  coffee-houses  —  Mercy!  It 
was  Burke's  privilege  to  take  Miss  Sharpless  home  that  even 
ing  —  and  Jim,  with  a  truly  fraternal  inability  to  perceive 
that  two  were  company  and  three  none,  walked  with  them  all 
the  way! 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Nat  had  now,  by  imperceptible 
degrees  and  entirely  unknown  to  himself,  entered  what 
Mr.  Jeames  de  la  Pluche  (writing  in  an  English  magazine, 
I  think,  at  about  this  time)  styled  the  "hupper  sukkles." 
The  young  man  who  was  studying  law  —  in  however  in 
formal  a  fashion  —  in  Governor  Gwynne's  office  had  a  cer 
tain  social  advantage  over  Mr.  Marsh's  head-bookkeeper; 
and  imagination  staggers  at  contemplating  the  gulf  that 
separated  that  same  young  man,  admitted  to  the  bar,  and 
moderately  successful,  from  Mr.  Ducey's  chore-boy  !  It  was 
not  ten  years  yet,  but  nobody  remembered  that  creditable 
yet  not  at  all  picturesque  passage  in  Burke's  career.  This 
subtle  alteration,  when  it  was  finally  forced  upon  Nat's 
notice,  moved  him,  as  Sharpless  was  moved  in  circumstances 
not  altogether  dissimilar,  to  hearty  mirth.  Like  Jim,  he 
was  conscious  of  no  change  in  himself,  unless  it  might  be 
the  change  incident  to  advancing  years  and  experience; 
failings  and  ambitions,  good  and  evil,  weak  and  strong,  the 
man  Nathan  Burke  was  the  boy  Nathan  Burke.  What  or 
who  was  accountable  for  the  new  atmosphere  in  which  he 
moved?  Why,  again,  in  one  word,  the  ladies!  "It's  the 
women  that  do  it,  after  all,"  Jim  had  said  of  his  own  case. 
Boy  and  man,  Nathan  had  never  lacked  friends  and  society 
among  his  own  sex,  nor  been  made  aware  of  any  barrier  of 


CONTAINS   BUSINESS   AND   PLEASURE       281 

caste;  it  is  the  wives  and  mothers  who  adjust  the  scale, 
who  judge,  decide,  govern,  and  protect  in  all  social  matters. 
Their  office  seems  to  be  somewhere  between  guardian  angel 
and  private  detective;  they  tell  us  whom  we  shall  bow  to 
on  the  street,  and  whom  we  may  invite  to  dinner;  we  dress, 
dance,  make  calls,  go  to  the  theatre,  frequent  church-fairs 
and  card-parties,  marry  and  give  in  marriage  by  their  for 
mula  —  it  is  conceivable  that  men,  left  to  themselves,  would 
never  perform  any  of  these  duties  at  all !  One  cannot  sup 
pose  that  all  the  matrons  of  our  society  assembled  in  caucus, 
and  took  a  rising  vote  as  to  Mr.  Burke's  eligibility  to  their 
own  and  their  daughters'  acquaintance;  there  would  be  a 
sort  of  crude  male  directness  about  such  a  proceeding.  No, 
the  thing  must  have  been  accomplished  by  some  potent 
agency  of  which  man  knows  nothing,  working  in  secret. 
Of  a  sudden  Nat  discovered  that  he  was  taking  off  his  hat 
a  great  many  more  times  upon  his  daily  walks  abroad  than 
he  ever  had  before;  that  Miss  Sharpless  was  not  the  sole 
young  lady  who  stopped  and  chatted  with  him  about  the 
weather;  that  it  might  be  desirable  to  own  an  evening-coat 
and  pumps;  and,  for  a  concluding  touch,  Miss  Frances  Blake, 
who  had  been  away  a  whole  year  in  New  York  City  at 
Madame  Chegaray's  fashionable  boarding-school,  and  re 
turned  altogether  grown  up  and  dressed  up,  called  him  "Mr. 
Burke"  with  a  bright  blush  over  her  fresh  little  face  —  which 
was  still  rather  round  and  infantine,  notwithstanding  her 
seventeen  years  —  and  gave  him  her  hand  in  a  very  formal 
style  when  they  met.  He  told  Jim  Sharpless  about  it  with 
a  laugh. 

"She  was  with  Mrs.  Ducey  and  George  in  the  carriage. 
Francie,  all  over  ribbons  with  a  straw  bonnet  full  of  flowers, 
like  a  dear  little  wren  dressed  out  in  bird  o'  Paradise  plumes. 
She  looks  prettier  in  plain  clothes,  I  think,  but  probably 
her  aunt  won't  have  her  any  other  way.  Mrs.  Ducey  herself 
was  very  brilliant,  ten  times  the  handsomer  woman  of  the 
two  even  at  her  age,  with  something  very  sweet,  proud,  and 
maternal  in  the  way  she  tried  to  put  Francie  forward  and  keep 
herself  in  the  background.  They've  always  treated  Francie 
just  like  their  own  child,  you  know.  But  Jim,  you  ought 
to  have  seen  George  Ducey  —  he  went  on  to  New  York 
with  his  mother,  you  know,  when  they  brought  Francie 


282  NATHAN  BURKE 

back  —  the  most  tremendous  swell  in  one  of  those  new  plaid 
velvet  waistcoats,  the  very  latest  cut,  and  his  boots  varnished 
with  that  patent  blacking-stuff  they  use  now,  so  you  could 
see  your  face  in  ;em,  '  through  a  glass  darkly '  like  a  rosewood 
piano-case.  And  lemon-colored  kid  gloves  so  tight  he  had 
to  hold  his  fingers  spread  out  —  he  couldn't  have  shaken 
hands  with  me  even  if  he'd  wanted  to.  They  saw  me  com 
ing  out  of  Gwynne's  office  —  otherwise  I  don't  know  whether 
George  could  have  been  prevailed  upon  to  recognize  me," 
said  Nat,  laughing;  "only  he'd  probably  mind  his  mother." 

"  Yes,  and  there  aren't  any  affectations  about  Mrs.  Ducey," 
Jim  said;  " she's  a  fine  woman.  If  you  were  a  chimney 
sweep,  she'd  stop  and  speak  to  you  before  all  the  world,  if  she 
liked  you  —  yes,  and  ask  you  to  her  house  and  give  you  the 
best  room  in  it  in  defiance  of  what  people  might  say.  I 
believe  she's  always  rather  championed  me.  I  know  she 
used  to  make  a  point  of  being  kind  to  me.  It  seems  incredible 
that  she  should  be  the  mother  of  that  infernal  puppy  George." 

Dr.  Vardaman,  sitting  by,  smoking  one  of  the  segars  to 
which  he  insisted  on  treating  us  —  of  the  very  best  variety, 
for  Jack  had  certain  fastidious  tastes  and  spent  a  good  deal 
of  money  that  way  —  looked  up  quizzically. 

"Why,  Jim,"  he  said,  "I  see  a  kind  of  crooked  likeness 
between  them.  You  might  define  it  by  saying  that  Mrs. 
Ducey's  worst  qualities  are  George's  best!" 

"There's  a  good  strong  dash  of  Ducey,  too,  I  think," 
growled  Jim;  "or  of  that  other  fellow  —  what  did  you  say 
his  name  was,  Nat  ?  Old  Marsh's  brother  that  he  told  you 
about.  I  mean  the  one  that  pretended  to  be  a  disinherited 
earl,  and  got  through  all  the  money  he  could  lay  hands  on  — 
George's  grandfather,  wasn't  he  ?  I  notice  a  kind  of  family 
likeness  there,  don't  you  ?  Lord,  what  a  jackass  the  creature 
is!"  said  Jim,  with  singular  fury;  "the  idea  of  that  nice, 
sweet,  sensible,  little  Fran  —  Miss  Blake  being  obliged  to 
go  around  with  him!" 

"She  won't  be  obliged  to  for  long,"  Vardaman  said  with  a 
laugh;  "calm  yourself.  Miss  Blake  is  pretty  well  liked  by 
the  men,  I  understand." 

"Oh"  said  Sharpless,  a  little  blankly;  and  he  sat  silent  for 
a  while,  puffing  furious  clouds  of  smoke. 

"How    are    your    medical    studies    progressing,    John?" 


CONTAINS   BUSINESS   AND   PLEASURE       283 

Nathan  asked  at  last;  and  all  three  young  men  burst  out 
laughing.  This  simple  question  had  been  a  by-word  with 
them  for  the  last  two  years  or  so.  It  gave  them  an  idiotic 
pleasure  to  support  the  fiction  of  the  doctor  being  George 
Ducey's  pupil;  they  laid  bets  as  to  how  much  longer  George 
would  continue  in  the  medical  profession,  and  which  he  would 
take  up  next :  law,  arms,  or  divinity  ?  Vardaman  displayed 
a  patience  with  him  which  might  have  confirmed  us  in  our 
belief  —  had  we  needed  to  be  confirmed  —  in  Jack's  unfail 
ing  generosity  of  spirit  and  kind  heart.  In  six  months 
George  was  directing  the  doctor  how  to  run  his  office,  cure 
his  patients,  collect  his  bills,  invest  his  money.  And  before 
long  we  heard  that  he  was  ripe  for  practice,  but  Jack  Varda- 
man's  envy  and  jealousy  held  him  back!77  "Oh,  that's 
nothing,  that  sort  of  talk,77  said  the  doctor  to  us  in  private, 
after  some  amiable  person  had  brought  him  this  report;  "it's 
what  George  may  do  that  I'm  afraid  of.  Supposing  some 
body  let  him  undertake  a  case  of  pneumonia  or  typhus  !  I  tell 
you,  fellows,  the  very  deviPs  in  it  —  he7s  a  menace  to  the 
community ! 7  7  But  Burke  thought  the  hard,  often  unpaid,  and 
thankless  duties  of  a  physician  would  not  be  enough  to  George's 
liking  for  the  doctor  to  dread  that  risk.  "Fancy  George 
hopping  out  of  bed  in  the  middle  of  a  freezing  winter  night 
to  go  to  a  case  of  small-pox  !77  he  said;  "or  leaving  his  nice 
hot  dinner  to  dose  somebody's  baby  for  the  croup.  It's 
unimaginable." 

It  was  so  natural  for  a  man  of  Jim  Sharpless's  character  to 
dislike  George  Ducey  that  I  am  sure  it  never  occurred  to 
either  of  his  friends  that  there  might  be  some  other  feeling 
equally  strong  underlying  his  dislike.  Burke  was  pretty 
well  occupied  with  his  own  affairs,  business  and  sentiment 
both,  at  this  time;  and,  as  months  went  on,  and  in  spite  of 
persistent  rumors,  Mary  and  the  doctor  never  seemed  to 
get  any  farther  than  a  comfortable  friendship,  Nat's  hopes 
revived.  Probably  they  had  never  suffered  any  serious  set 
back,  for  love  being  on  the  whole  a  selfish  growth,  it  is  diffi 
cult  to  kill  out,  except  by  some  such  withering  frost  as  mar 
riage  with  somebody  else  —  which  was  what  Jack  Vardaman 
had  had  to  endure.  And,  at  any  rate,  even  the  most  diffident 
and  self-distrustful  of  men  —  which  Burke  was  not  —  could 
hardly  have  interpreted  otherwise  than  as  encouragement 


284  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  gentle  words  and  glances  he  got  from  Miss  Sharpless. 
She  was  so  sweet,  so  sympathetic,  so  deeply  interested  in  his 
work  and  plans,  so  unaffectedly  glad  to  see  him,  so  mindful 
of  his  tastes,  even  to  the  point  of  wearing  frocks  he  had 
admired  and  playing  his  favorite  selection  on  the  pianoforte, 
which  was  a  good,  loud,  thundering  piece  entitled  "The 
Battle  of  Prague,"  that  made  the  windows  rattle  and  sent 
agreeable  tremors  up  and  down  the  spine  —  I  do  not  see  what 
he  could  have  gathered  from  all  this  unless  encouragement. 
Once  she  called  him  "Nathan,"  by  accident,  of  course,  and 
apologized  for  it  in  a  confusion  that  melted  him  into  an 
alarming  state  of  tenderness.  "I  always  think  of  you  that 
way  —  I  —  I  can't  help  it,  you  know,"  said  Mary  —  and 
then  Mrs.  Sharpless  came  in  with  her  crocheting  and  uncon 
sciously  put  a  stop  to  the  very  interesting  avowal  Mr.  Burke 
was  about  to  make. 

He  was  a  little  relieved  to  think  he  had  been  so  headed  off, 
as  he  walked  back  to  Mrs.  Slaney's  that  night.  What  busi 
ness  had  he  to  ask  any  woman  to  marry  him,  or  to  wait 
for  him  until  he  had  enough  to  marry  on  ?  It  would  be  doing 
her  a  rank  injustice  if  she  accepted  him  —  and  giving  her 
needless  distress  if  she  refused.  Jack  Vardaman  now  —  but 
Jack  hadn't  the  faintest  idea  of  asking  Mary  or  anybody  else, 
Nat  was  confident;  and  had  no  qualms  even  when,  calling  at 
the  house,  he  found  the  doctor  seated  cosily  on  the  frail  little 
shabby  parlor-sofa  which  Mrs.  Sharpless  had  patched  up  in 
a  dozen  places,  listening  to  Lord  knows  what  symphony, 
nocturne,  berceuse,  or  other  species  of  music  in  which  Varda 
man  had  a  discriminating  and  cultivated  taste.  "Don't 
you  want  'The  Battle  of  Prague'  now,  Mr.  Burke?"  says 
Mary,  the  moment  it  is  finished,  directing  her  clear  glance 
upon  him  almost  with  the  effect  of  a  caress.  "Oh,  yes,  let's 
have  'The  Battle  of  Prague,'  by  all  means,"  says  the  doctor, 
heartily.  And  presently  the  sofa  is  quivering  under  them 
to  the  chords  of  that  martial  composition,  and  Mrs.  Sharp- 
less  casting  rather  apprehensive  glances  in  its  direction. 
Both  gentlemen  applaud  the  finale  to  the  echo,  and  Mary 
asks  Mr.  Burke  what  he  will  have  next  ?  For  somehow  it 
seems  to  Nat  that  she  is  always  kindest  and  sweetest  to  him 
when  Jack  Vardaman  is  by  ! 


CHAPTER  XXI 
IN  WHICH  MR.  BURKE  CASTS  HIS  FIRST  VOTE 

WHETHER  the  points  at  issue  in  the  Presidential  campaign 
of  1844  were  more  vital  to  the  nation's  health,  or  were  more 
bitterly  and  vigorously  contested,  or  whether  the  event  ac 
quired  importance  and  dignity  in  his  eyes  from  the  operation 
recorded  in  the  heading  of  this  chapter,  or  from  whatever 
cause,  Burke  has  always  retained  a  more  vivid  memory  of 
that  political  struggle  than  of  any  other,  even  the  much  dead 
lier  and  more  decisive  ones  that  succeeded  it.  My  friends, 
it's  a  fine  thing  to  be  young  and  cast  your  first  vote.  How 
much  depends  on  that  ballot !  With  what  a  fresh  and  hon 
est  patriotism  and  zealous  belief  is  it  slipped  into  the  box ! 
How  eloquently,  how  earnestly,  how  solemnly  were  the  young 
voters  of  the  country  who  were  about  to  perform  this  feat 
exhorted  and  addressed  from  the  platform,  the  pulpit,  the 
Court-house  steps,  the  State-house  yard,  the  street-corners, 
the  editorial  columns  of  the  Ohio  Statesman  (Dem.),  the 
State  Journal  (Whig),  the  dozen-and-one  partisan  sheets 
which  used  to  spring  up  about  the  first  of  August  and  flourish 
until  after  the  first  Friday  in  November,  when  they  all  incon 
tinently  withered  down  like  Jonah's  gourd !  I  came  upon 
one  of  them  by  accident  the  other  day;  maybe  it  had  been 
guaranteeing  some  parcel  against  the  moth  in  a  corner  of  the 
garret;  it  was  yellowed  with  time  and  dust;  its  old  print, 
its  clumsy  old  wood-cuts  were  yellowed  —  and  Good  Lord, 
what  a  lifeless  thing  it  was  with  its  vapid  boasting,  its  lies, 
its  toothless  sarcasms,  its  insults  that  can't  insult  anybody 
any  more,  its  jokes  that  will  never  again  raise  a  laugh  this 
side  of  Styx!  Once  it  must  have  come  off  the  presses  damp, 
and  been  hawked  about  the  streets,  and  eagerly  bought  and 
read  and  wrangled  over  —  can  you  fancy  it  ?  I  remember 
the  man  who  edited  it  —  I  who  speak  to  you  —  and  he  was 

285 


286  NATHAN   BURKE 

a  good  fellow  in  spite  of  the  terrific  blows  he  gave  and  took; 
now  he  and  his  paper  and  the  men  he  assailed  are  one  dust; 
and  the  principles  they  supported,  and  the  war  they  waged, 
and  the  rest  of  their  deeds,  are  they  not  all  written  in  chron 
icles  where  anybody  can  read  them  and  nobody  does  ?  Yet 
a  little  while,  and  you  and  I  shall  have  joined  them;  and  other 
battles  shall  go  on  over  our  heads,  and  other  voters  shall 
be  shouted  at  and  encouraged  and  blarneyed,  and  we  shall 
rest  well  in  our  secure  and  comfortable  oblivion. 

Mr.  Burke,  who  had  little  time  to  spare  from  the  business 
of  making  his  living,  and  had  arrived  at  a  hearty  contempt 
for  certain  political  methods  and  their  exponents,  and  who, 
moreover,  had  made  up  his  youthful  mind  early  in  the  game 
and  resolved  to  vote  for  Clay  and  Frelinghuysen  when  the 
Whig  Convention  in  Baltimore  announced  those  gentlemen 
as  its  choice  of  candidates,  about  the  beginning  of  May, 
presently  found  himself  somewhat  in  the  position  of  the 
innocent  bystander  who  is  always  getting  into  trouble  during 
a  riot.  For  all  his  obstinacy  and  indifference  he  could  not 
escape  the  contagion  of  excitement.  Were  we  more  in  ear 
nest  in  those  days,  or  was  it  only  that  we  had  less  of  public 
interest  to  occupy  our  minds  ?  We  looked  to  a  change  of 
administration  as  we  might  have  to  the  millennium.  Dur 
ing  a  Presidential  campaign,  every  other  kind  of  business 
came  almost  to  an  absolute  stand;  at  this  distance  of  time 
it  seems  to  me  we  spent  the  days  in  mass-meetings  and  the 
nights  in  torch-light  parades.  The  store  windows  were 
crowded  with  flags,  portraits,  "  emblems."  The  Whigs 
were  "Coons,"  the  Democrats  "Polk-stalks,"  "Polk-berries," 
"Polk  -  "  never  mind  what !  These  elegant  pages  shall  not 
be  defaced  with  all  the  names  we  bestowed  on  one  another. 

Amongst  Nat's  acquaintance  there  was  a  pretty  fair  divi 
sion  between  Clay  men  and  Polk  men,  old  Mr.  Marsh  be 
longing  to  the  first  party,  Sharpless  and  Jack  Vardaman  to 
the  last-named.  Oddly  "enough,  these  younger  men  did  not 
seem  to  take  the  political  situation  so  seriously  as  old  George, 
who,  having  seen  certainly  a  half-score  of  campaigns,  ought 
to  have  been,  one  would  think,  tolerably  well  seasoned  to  them 
by  this  time.  But  his  interest  was  almost  boyishly  vehe 
ment;  he  stopped  people  on  the  street,  he  held  forth  in  the 
Erin-go-Bragh;  putting,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  a  great 


MR.    BURKE   CASTS   HIS   FIRST   VOTE        287 

deal  of  energy  into  expounding  and  defending  the  doctrines 
of  his  party  to  men  who,  like  Burke,  believed  as  he  did,  and 
did  not  need  to  be  argued  over.  Perhaps  the  old  man 
wearied  of  his  deferential  audience  at  the  store;  he  hardly 
took  the  pains  to  pretend  an  interest  in  Ducey's  opinions. 
The  clerks  reported  that  he  was  daily  growing  more  crabbed 
and  exacting  —  "and  grumpy  —  you  never  saw  the  beat 
of  him!"  one  boy  told  Nathan;  "he'll  sit  for  hours  without 
saying  a  word.  He's  asleep  part  of  the  time  over  his  old 
paper,  and  always  wakes  up  mad  as  a  hornet  and  glares 
around  to  see  if  anybody's  noticed  him.  There  ain't  so 
many  people  coming  in  to  see  him  as  there  used  to  was, 
y'know,  Nat.  It's  sort  of  dull  in  the  store." 

"Campaign  year,  you  know,"  Burke  suggested.  But  the 
other  shook  his  head.  "  'Tain't  that,"  he  said  wisely. 
"Marsh  is  getting  pretty  old,  and,  by  jingo,  there  ain't  any 
body  left  to  come  in.  They've  been  dying  off  lately  —  old 
So-and-So,  you  know,  and  Such-a-One  -  ''  he  named  them 
—  "dying  off  like  flies.  Pretty  soon  George'll  be  the  only 
one  left." 

Nathan  was  relieved  to  find  that,  notwithstanding  these 
gloomy  tidings,  old  George  always  seemed  cheerful,  alert, 
and  sprightly  enough  when  they  met;  age  had  not  withered 
him  so  far,  Burke  said  to  himself,  and  used  to  listen  interest 
edly  to  his  ancient  chief's  exposition  of  the  questions  of  the 
day,  even  if  his  views  were  not  especially  illuminating  or 
original. 

"Now  who's  James  K.  Polk?"  was  Mr.  Marsh's  favorite 
expression  of  contempt  and  satire;  "never  heard  of  him 
before.  What's  James  K.  Polk  ever  done  ?  By  all  accounts 
nothing  but  keep  his  head  shut.  A  wooden  man  could  do 
that!"  —and  so  on,  and  so  on;  thus  old  George,  stopping 
Burke  on  the  corner  where  they  have  both  lingered  on  the 
skirts  of  the  crowd  to  listen  to  some  gentleman  of  empurpled 
countenance  and  boundless  lung  capacity  discuss  the  above 
point.  They  can  hear  the  gathering  cheer  for  the  "Sage 
of  Ashland"  as  they  go  on  down  the  street.  Everybody 
was  the  Somebody  of  Somewhere  during  this  campaign  — 
except  Mr.  Polk  himself,  who  was  the  Nobody  of  Nowhere. 
The  contest  was  close  and  there  was  plenty  of  cheering  for 
both  candidates.  Nat  used  to  hear  it  as  he  sat  at  the  decent 


288  NATHAN   BURKE 

and  dignified  desk  which  had  replaced  the  pine  table  in  his 
quarters  above  stairs  over  the  shoemaker's,  with  the  windows 
open  and  the  summer  breeze  ruffling  his  papers.  I  can  hear 
it  now;  forty  years  after  I  can  hear  the  hurrahing  and  the 
bands  tooting  bravely;  .  .  .  "the  country's  risin'  for  Harry 
Clay  and  Frelinghuysen ! "  and  I  can  see  young  Nat  Burke, 
who  will  vote  this  fall,  at  his  labors. 

We  did  not  see  much  of  Sharpless  these  days;  he  was 
forever  dashing  about  from  one  political  hive  to  another  in 
all  parts  of  the  State,  and  meeting  many  of  the  great  ones  of 
this  earth.  He  wrote  letters  to  his  paper;  you  could  recog 
nize  Jim's  bright  ridicule,  his  good-tempered  irony,  his  plain 
man's  logic.  In  all  the  crew  of  scribblers,  I  think  he  was  the 
only  one  who  wrote  like  a  gentleman,  and  argued,  denounced, 
or  made  fun  with  equal  spirit  and  dignity.  The  shrieking 
demands  of  his  fellow-Democrats  to  annex  Texas,  to  settle 
the  Oregon  boundary  at  54°  40',  or  wade  in  blood,  found  no 
echo  in  Jim's  sane  and  just  and  intelligent  commentary  ; 
in  fact,  many  would  have  thought  the  young  fellow  did  not 
always  regard  these  subjects  with  the  gravity  they  deserved, 
treating,  for  instance,  the  " fifty-four-f orty  or  fight"  slogan 
of  his  party  with  ineradicable  levity. 

"It's  right  and  proper  to  have  convictions,"  he  used  to  say 
solemnly;  "but  I  can't  get  into  any  sweat  over  the  Oregon 
boundary.  It's  too  far  away  !" 

All  this  while,  let  it  be  observed,  there  was  a  third  party 
in  the  field,  and  creating  some  commotion ;  namely,  that  same 
devoted  band  of  martyrs  or  fanatics,  which  you  choose,  who 
had  figured  forlornly  in  the  Harrison- Van  Buren  campaign, 
and  wore  the  title  of  Abolitionists.  Now  they  appeared  as 
the  Liberty  Party,  with  a  substantial  increase  of  following, 
and  under  the  leadership,  as  before,  of  Mr.  Birney,  who  this 
time  had  not  refused  the  nomination  ;  twice  on  the  Lupercal 
had  they  offered  him  a  kingly  crown,  which  he  finally  ac 
cepted — with,  as  he  knew  and  everybody  else  knew,  no  more 
chance  of  winning  at  the  polls  than  if  he  had  been  the  Great 
Cham  of  Tartary.  Yet  the  party  had  undoubtedly  gained 
ground;  there  was  some  faint  talk  about  the  "balance  of 
power" ;  I  think  both  Whigs  and  Democrats,  if  they  did  not  ex 
actly  court  the  Liberty  Party,  at  least  behaved  with  one  eye 
to  its  opinions.  And  it  was  very  generally  believed  after  the 


MR.    BURKE   CASTS   HIS   FIRST   VOTE        289 

election  that  many  Abolitionists  had  actually  voted  with  the 
Whigs,  whose  sentiments  more  nearly  agreed  with  their  own. 
They  had  adopted  a  spirited  set  of  resolutions,  full  of  brave 
and  outspoken  truths,  which  either  a  Whig  or  a  Democrat 
would  have  been  put  to  his  trumps  to  answer.  The  fact 
was,  nobody  did  answer  them;  in  some  places  they  were 
laughed  at,  in  some  sympathized  with,  in  some  pelted  with 
rotten  eggs.  All  these  varieties  of  treatment  were  accorded 
them  in  our  State  —  in  spite  of  a  pretty  strong  and  steadily 
growing  anti-slavery  feeling  —  and  it  fell  to  Burke's  lot  to 
witness  one  reception  of  an  Abolitionist  speaker  —  even  to 
take  part  in  it. 

"  Father  will  go  around  and  speechify  on  this  slavery  busi 
ness,"  Jim  Sharpless  told  his  friend  with  an  anxious  face; 
"  he  did  at  the  last  election,  you  know,  and  begged  for  'em, 
and  wrote  and  preached  and  worked  night  and  day  - 

"I  remember  him  coming  into  Mr.  Marsh's  office  with  a 
committee,  after  a  subscription,"  Nat  said.  He  described 
the  meeting,  and  Jim  listened  with  a  half-smile,  half-frown. 

"Think  of  father  doing  that,  Nat,"  he  said,  looking  at  the 
other  with  a  flush  on  his  lean  cheeks;  "nobody  knows  what 
it  cost  him.  He's  —  he's  a  proud  man,  a  high-tempered 
man  —  he  hates  from  his  inmost  soul  to  ask  for  money  - 
don't  /  know  that?  We're  just  alike  —  but  I  couldn't 
bend  myself  to  do  the  things  father  does  for  duty's  sake  — 
I'm  no  such  man  as  he  is,"  said  Jim,  humbly.  "He  thinks 
it's  required  of  him  by  God  and  the  church  and  the  cause  of 
Abolition  to  go  out  and  suffer  all  kinds  of  rebuffs  and  humilia 
tions  and  sneers  —  and,  by  heavens,  yes,  Nat,  the  old  man's 
run  into  actual  bodily  danger  sometimes  in  these  rough 
places  where  he's  been  making  speeches.  I  don't  know 
whether  he  knows  it,  but  if  he  did,  he'd  go  just  the  same 
and  speak.  He's  not  afraid  of  anything  on  this  earth." 

"  Couldn't  your  mother,  or  —  or  Miss  Mary  persuade  him 
not  to  ?  I  should  think  he'd  do  anything  for  her  —  for  them, 
I  mean,"  asked  Burke. 

"Mother  or  Mary?  Pooh  !  Why,  Nat,  you  know  better 
than  that.  I'd  like  to  see  anybody  stop  Jonathan  Sharpless 
when  he  thinks  he's  doing  his  duty  —  or  when  he's  got  his 
head  set,  it  amounts  to  the  same  thing,"  said  his  son  with 
almost  a  laugh;  "I  tell  you,  though,  some  of  these  other  old 


290  NATHAN   BURKE 

Abolition  boys  realize  when  there're  rocks  ahead,  and  are 
entirely  willing  to  crawfish  out  of  trouble.  I  met  old  Elder 
Williams  —  you  know  him,  don't  you,  the  one  that  has  the 
soap-boiling  and  refinery  concern  down  on  Front  Street, 
he's  a  great  light  in  the  church  and  the  Liberty  Party  —  I 
say  I  saw  him  on  the  street  the  other  day,  and  I  naturally 
expected  him  to  pass  me  by  on  the  other  side,  as  long  as  he 
hasn't  recognized  me  for  years.  But  this  time,  didn't  he 
linger  along  with  one  eye  on  me  and  a  sort  of  expression  as  if 
he'd  speak  if  he  was  sure  the  Almighty  wasn't  keeping  tab 
on  him!  So  I  stopped  —  7  haven't  any  responsibilities, 
and  I  never  heard  of  anything  against  Elder  Williams,"  said 
Jim,  with  great  seriousness.  "'How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Wil 
liams?  '  says  I  affably.  '  Hum  —  ha  —  how  do  you  do, 
James  f  I  —  hum  —  ha  —  I  read  your  book  with  great  in 
terest  —  hum  —  ha  —  we  haven't  seen  much  of  you  lately, 
James  —  hum  —  I  might  have  told  him  he  hadn't 
looked,"  said  Jim,  grinning;  "but  I  didn't.  The  fact  is. 
Nathan,  I  was  a  good  deal  floored  by  this  notice.  It  looked 
to  me  as  if  the  old  gentleman  had  something  more  particular 
to  say,  and  didn't  quite  know  how  to  get  himself  started. 
I  told  him  I  had  been  out  of  town  more  or  less  all  summer, 
going  around  from  one  political  meeting  to  another.  That 
seemed  to  help  him  along  a  little;  he  wanted  to  know  if  I 
thought  —  hum  —  the  Whigs  were  going  to  carry  the  State? 
'Why,  Mr.  Williams,'  said  I,  'it  seems  to  me  it's  a  pretty 
close  thing  between  Clay  and  Polk.  You  know  I  —  ahem 
- 1  see  all  kinds  of  men,  and  I  have  to  go  into  all  kinds  of 
places,  and  I  notice  that  the  —  ahem  —  the  betting  is  very 
heavy  both  ways.  There's  a  great  deal  of  enthusiasm,  and 
absolute  confidence.'  I  put  this  with  rather  an  apologetic 
air  —  you  don't  want  to  talk  to  a  deacon  about  betting  and 
all  that  you  know  —  but  elder  Williams  never  turned  a  hair! 
Only  looked  interested  and  thoughtful  and  hum-ha'd  several 
times,  until,  by  jingo,  Nat,  I  began  to  think  he  wanted  to  get 
a  fifty  or  so  down  on  Clay  or  Polk  himself  !  'I  may  as  well 
be  plain,  Mr.  Williams,'  says  I,  wishing  to  change  the  sub 
ject  and  lead  him  from  temptation;  'as  far  as  I  can  see 
your  party  hasn't  the  ghost  of  a  show.  I  dare  say  you  never 
had  any  solid  expectation  of  success  anyhow.  At  the  last 
election  Birney  and  Lemoyne  polled  seven  thousand  and  odd 


MR.   BURKE   CASTS   HIS   FIRST   VOTE        291 

votes,  I  understand;  and  this  time  there'll  be  more  —  ten 
times  as  many  —  seven  or  eight  thousand,  I  haven't  a  doubt, 
right  here  in  Ohio  alone.  So  you  might  say  that  your  views 
are  receiving  some  endorsement.  It's  not  wholly  discourag 
ing.'  Now,  Nat,  if  I'd  said  that  to  father,  he  would  have 
raised  up,  looking  like  an  ancient  Hebrew  prophet,  and 
thundered  out  something  about  Truth  is  mighty  and  SHALL 
prevail,  and  the  Blood  of  the  Martyrs  is  the  Seed  of  the 
Church,  and  so  on.  But  Elder  Williams  is  a  practical  old 
soap-boiler,  and  I  could  see  he  was  a  good  deal  put  out  over 
the  whole  business.  He  got  quite  confidential  and  complain 
ing —  knowing,  of  course,  that  he  could  talk  to  an  outlaw 
like  me  without  restraint.  He  said  he  was  against  slavery, 
of  course,  he  believed  any  humane  man  would  be  against  it; 
but  he  thought  —  hum  —  ha  —  the  time  was  not  ripe  to 
throw  it  off.  He  was  of  opinion  —  ha  —  that  there  was 
little  or  no  use  in  going  around  and  rabidly  denouncing  so 
solidly  established  an  institution;  that  it  only  provoked 
ill-feeling  and,  —  er  —  in  short,  was  a  waste  of  time  and  — 
hum  —  money.  He  had  not  quite  understood  the  aims  and 
methods  of  the  Liberty  Party  in  the  beginning,  and  doubted 
whether  he  would  have  —  er  —  allied  himself  with  them, 
if  he  had  known  what  he  was  going  into,  in  short.  He  had 
personally  contributed  to  their  campaign-fund,  and  —  hum 
—  he  considered  that  money  as  much  thrown  away  as  water 
through  a  sieve.  He  had  even  been  obliged  to  go  with  other 
members  of  his  committee  into  very  low  parts  of  the  city 
and  county,  full  of  rowdies  and  blacklegs,  where  he  thought 
it  was  a  needless  risk  to  send  a  man  of  his  age,  and  that  he 
wouldn't  give  a  —  a  fig  for  all  the  converts  made  in  those 
districts;  any  respectable  man  would  rather  have  'em  against 
him  than  with  him!  'Now,  for  instance,  James/  he  said 
(he  was  getting  pretty  well  warmed  up  by  this  time),  'I 
am  expected  to  go  with  —  with  your  father,  who  is  to  speak, 
down  to  one  of  those  resorts  near  the  river  — -  Harmony  Hall, 
I  think  they  call  the  place,  probably  you  know  all  about  it 
-  next  Tuesday  night.  They've  promised  us  a  constable 
-but  I  consider  it  a  preposterous  undertaking  for  both  of 
us,  even  if  it  did  any  good,  and  it  don't.  I  have  endeavored 
to  dissuade  your  father,  but  he  is  quite  set  on  it.  I  —  I 
really  don't  know  whether  I'll  be  able  to  go  —  hum  —  ha  — 


292  NATHAN   BURKE 

Mrs.  Williams  is  not  at  all  well,  and  I  don't  like^to  leave  her 

—  and  we  —  er  —  we're  expecting  my  brother's  wife  with 
her    children    from    Pittsburgh    and  —  er  —  I  —  I'm    very 
busy  at  the  factory,  so  that  I  doubt  if  I  can  spare  the  time. 
I  thought  likely  you  didn't  know  about  this  meeting,  and 
while  I  wouldn't  like  to  take  it  on  myself,  I  —  um  —  I  would 
suggest   that   you   attend   it,    and   use   your  —  um  —  your 
influence     with  —  um  —  those     people,    to     keep     order.' 
Don't  laugh,  Nat.     The  old  fellow  meant  well,"  Jim  wound 
up;   "  and  it's  only  common  sense  for  him  to  keep  out  of  such 
a  place." 

On  sober  thought,  one  could  not  but  agree  with  Elder 
Williams's  fight-and-run-away,  or  rather  run-away-without- 
fighting  policy.  Harmony  Hall  was  the  chief  ornament  of 
that  part  of  the  city  called  "  The  Bottoms/'  long  since  swept 
out  and  purified.  It  was  a  vile  locality  —  we  did  not  have 
the  word  slum  then,  but  much  as  slum  stands  for,  even  it 
might  scarcely  have  described  The  Bottoms.  The  prospect 
of  poor  Mr.  Sharpless  carrying  his  already  hopeless  crusade 
amongst  that  population  of  pickpockets,  drabs,  and  despera 
does  —  not  a  few  of  them  black,  or  colored,  by  the  way  — 
where  it  was  a  common  and  facetious  saying  that  for  fifty 
cents  you  could  hire  a  man  to  vote  for  Beelzebub  and  go  to 
Hell  to  do  it,  too,  for  that  matter  —  I  say  the  idea  of  address 
ing  these  worthies  in  the  cause  of  Abolition  would  have  been 
funny,  if  it  had  not  been  so  disquieting.  It  was  of  a  piece 
with  the  kind  of  noble  futility,  the  baseless  altruism  which 
distinguished  not  alone  Jim's  father,  but  many  another 
enthusiast  on  the  anti-slavery  side.  Did  not  the  Saviour 
of  mankind  visit  and  dwell  with  publicans  and  sinners,  they 
thought.  And  are  we  not  all  enjoined  to  carry  the  Gospel 
unto  the  heathen  ? 

Jim  recited  his  conversation  with  Elder  Williams  —  whom 
he  mimicked  to  admiration  —  with  abundant  dry  and  droll 
humor;  yet  he  was  seriously  perturbed  by  his  father's  plans. 
It  should  be  explained,  in  justice  to  two  tolerably  decent 
young  men,  that  neither  of  them  was  at  all  familiar  with 
The  Bottoms  district  —  whatever  Mr.  Williams  had  hinted 

—  Burke,  indeed,  having  been  there  only  once  in  his  whole 
life,  at  the  time  he  was  hunting  for  Nance  Darnell.     Harmony 
Hall  itself  was  a  ramshackle  tenement,  whereof  the  upper 


MR.   BURKE  CASTS   HIS   FIRST   VOTE        293 

story  was  let  out  as  some  kind  of  rooming-house,  I  think, 
and  the  entire  first  floor  thrown  into  one  big  dance-hall. 
The  Bottoms  congregated  and  held  festivities  there  by 
night  under  the  domain  of  a  wretched  old  ruffianly  saloon 
and  dive  keeper,  called  White  Hat  Sam;  —  if  he  had  an 
other  name,  nobody  ever  heard  it.  The  dances  generally 
broke  up  in  a  wholesale  row;  somebody  was  forever  being 
robbed,  beaten,  shot,  or  stabbed  in  Harmony  Hall  —  whence, 
I  suppose,  it  had  acquired  its  ironic  title,  bestowed  with  that 
extraordinary,  half-malicious  levity  which,  as  a  people,  we 
sometimes  display  towards  things  sad  and  disgraceful  enough 
in  themselves.  But,  on  Tuesday  night,  when,  having  elected 
to  see  the  Reverend  Sharpless  (as  he  was  most  commonly 
styled)  through  this  particular  experience,  the  son  and  his 
friend  arrived  on  the  spot,  it  was,  if  not  as  quiet  as  might 
have  been  wished,  still  as  quiet  as  most  political  gatherings 
of  that  date,  according  to  Jim,  who  was  thoroughly  versed 
in  them  by  this.  "They  aren't  exactly  sewing-circles, "  he 
said.  The  street  was  full  of  sinister-looking  loungers,  all 
the  grog-shops  were  in  full  blast,  and  Harmony  Hall  itself 
showed  a  great  illumination  of  smoking,  stinking,  dripping  oil- 
lamps  with  battered  tin  reflectors,  and  some  rags  of  red, 
white,  and  blue  bunting  strung  here  and  there  in  decoration. 
Within  there  was  a  good-sized  audience  already  collected 
and  standing  about,  leaning  against  the  walls,  or  sprawled 
on  the  steps  of  the  speaker's  platform  at  the  upper  end  of  the 
room.  The  band  was  probably  stationed  there  on  ordinary 
occasions,  for  there  was  a  piano  going  full-tilt,  and  a  burly 
songster  in  a  red  waistcoat  and  collarless  shirt  was  raucously 
discoursing  campaign  airs.  Everybody  smoked,  chewed, 
spat,  drank,  talked  at  the  top  of  his  lungs,  all  at  once,  but 
the  disorder  was  no  worse  than  it  might  have  been  anywhere ; 
and  Sharpless  and  his  companion  were  surprised  and  relieved. 
Nevertheless  when  a  sallow,  shifty-eyed  youth  in  a  grimy 
apron  came  up  proffering  liquor,  they  thought  it  the  part  of 
prudence  to  buy  a  drink  apiece.  "  When  you're  in  Rome  — 
Jim  whispered;  "I  shouldn't  wonder  if  we  were  being 
watched  every  minute.  They've  got  their  eyes  peeled  for 
all  strangers,  you  know  —  and  White  Hat  might  gently  drop 
us  in  the  cistern  if  we  didn't  buy  his  execrable  stuff." 

"  Ain't  been  here  very  recent,  have  yer?"  inquired  the  pot- 


294  NATHAN   BURKE 

boy  with  a  rather  startling  appropriateness,  returning  at  the 
moment  from  another  customer.  He  arranged  the  glasses 
on  his  slopped  tray  to  make  room  for  theirs.  "Thank  ye, 
sir.  Old  place  looks  jest  th'  same,  don't  it?"  he  added  with 
as  open  a  smile  as  his  features,  which  were  not  constructed 
by  Nature  for  any  such  expression,  could  compass. 

"Just  the  same/'  said  Jim,  smoothly.  "And  there's  my 
old  friend  Leroux  at  the  piano!"  The  boy  eyed  us  plainly 
puzzled;  but  indeed  it  was  Leroux,  whom  Mr.  Burke  had 
never  had  the  honor  of  meeting  before,  a  withered,  dirty, 
shaking,  poor  wretch,  old  as  the  hills,  and  about  three-parts 
drunk;  yet  the  crazy  instrument  responded  with  something 
like  fire  and  precision  under  his  begrimed,  unsteady  hands. 
He  embraced  Jim  (in  the  French  fashion  on  both  cheeks 
to  the  huge  delight  of  the  bystanders)  when  the  latter  pre 
sented  himself.  "  Mon  cher  —  mon  enfant  —  est-ce  bien  toi 
que  je  tiens  dans  mes  bras!"  says  old  Leroux,  weeping  pro 
fusely;  and  peered  up  at  him  a  little  bewildered  with  his 
bleary  old  eyes.  "Vat  it  ees,  your  name,  hein?  I  haf 
forgot — ah,  cette  vilaine  memoir e — /" 

"My  name's  Jim,"  said  the  other,  warily. 

"Ah,  oui,  je  me  rappelle  —  ce  cher  Jeem  —  "  It  is  much  to 
be  doubted  whether  he  did  remember,  however;  but  he  in 
sisted  on  their  taking  another  drink  out  of  the  bottle  and 
tumbler  beside  him  on  the  piano;  the  Harmony  Hallers 
looked  on,  wondering  and  amused. 

"Don't  they  furnish  chairs,  sir?"  Burke  inquired  —  by 
way  of  being  sociable  —  of  a  gentleman  who,  with  his  shoulder 
propped  against  the  wall  near  by,  was  diligently  picking  his 
teeth  with  a  pen-knife.  He  wiped  it  on  his  coat-sleeve, 
snapped  it  shut,  and  thrust  it  into  his  breeches-pocket  before 
answering,  regarding  them  the  while  speculatively. 

1 '  Chairs  —  hell ! "  he  then  observed  negligently :  ' '  No  — 
Sam  don't  never  have  chairs  any  more.  He  ain't  made  o' 
money,  ye  know."  A  remark  which,  although  apparently 
irrelevant,  was  not  without  a  certain  ominous  significance. 
They  took  a  position  close  to  the  dais  at  the  imminent  risk  of 
being  deafened  by  the  musical  performance;  and  in  no  great 
while  afterwards  the  speaker  of  the  evening  came  in,  unat 
tended,  with  a  little  rather  ironical  cheering  (one  of  us  fan 
cied)  in  his  wake  as  he  walked  up  to  his  place.  Mr.  Sharpless 


MR.   BURKE   CASTS   HIS   FIRST   VOTE        295 

heard  it  unmoved;  he  was  too  used  to  public  speaking  to  be 
flustered  by  any  ordinary  reception;  he  mounted  the  steps 
in  a  momentary  hush  and  went  over  and  began  to  arrange 
his  notes  on  the  squalid  table  under  one  of  the  lamps  as  calmly 
as  if  he  had  been  in  his  own  pulpit  of  a  Sunday  morning,  with 
his  flock  decorously  awaiting  the  Word  of  God.  The  present 
congregation  surveyed  him  with  a  kind  of  jocose  ferocity; 
their  sense  of  humor  was  probably  deeply  tickled  by  the  in 
congruous  spectacle  of  Mr.  Sharpless's  long,  lean,  rigid  black 
figure  and  Mosaic  countenance  in  this  Harmony  Hall  setting. 
They  manifestly  wanted  to  see  what  he  was  going  to  do ;  and 
when  some  wit  loudly  advised  him  from  the  floor  to  "Go  it, 
Daddy  Longlegs!  Give  the  —  hell!"  he  was  summarily  and 
not  too  gently  silenced  by  his  neighbors.  One  of  those 
most  active  in  promoting  quiet  was  a  short,  stout,  thick- 
necked  man  with  greasy  gray  hair  under  his  old  shabby  head 
gear.  "White  Hat  Sam,"  murmured  Jim,  nudging  his 
friend;  and  this  celebrity  presently  came  up,  and  slouched 
heavily  down  on  the  step  not  far  away;  he  must  have  been 
upwards  of  sixty  years  old,  Burke  observed  with  surprise. 

"If  you  will  kindly  come  to  order,  my  friends,"  said  Mr. 
Sharpless,  coming  forward  with  his  papers  in  one  hand,  and 
fumbling  for  his  eye-glasses  with  the  other.  He  was  not  im 
mediately  heard,  and  repeated  the  words,  raising  his  voice, 
without  effect.  "Order,  if  you  please,  gentlemen!"  cried 
the  divine  again,  peering  at  the  crowd  with  his  near-sighted 
eyes  over  his  spectacles.  White  Hat  Sam  looked  up  at  him, 
grinning  obscenety.  Still  the  meeting  did  come  to  order  — 
after  a  fashion  —  in  a  moment  or  two;  it  seemed  to  Burke  as 
if  the  moving  spirit  of  all  these  demonstrations,  whether  to 
instigate  riot  or  preserve  peace,  was  the  proprietor.  They 
took  their  cue  from  him;  yet  he  sat  motionless,  heavy,  and 
inert  as  a  Hindoo  idol.  And  Mr.  Sharpless  began. 

The  first  part  of  his  address  —  nobody  ever  heard  the 
last  —  was,  as  I  remember,  a  sort  of  history  of  Slavery  in  the 
United  States,  and  would  have  been  interesting  enough  to 
any  other  audience.  It  is  very  common  at  this  day  (said  Mr. 
Sharpless)  to  speak  of  our  revolutionary  struggle  as  com 
menced  and  carried  forward  by  a  union  of  Free  and  Slave 
colonies;  but  such  is  not  the  case.  However  slender  and  dubi- 


296  NATHAN   BURKE 

ous  its  legal  basis,  Slavery  existed  in  each  and  all  of  the  col 
onies  that  united  to  declare  and  maintain  their  independence. 
.  .  .  The  spirit  of  liberty  aroused  and  intensified  by  the 
protracted  struggle  against  usurped  and  abused  power  in  the 
mother  country.  .  .  .  How,  my  friends,  shall  we  complain 
of  arbitrary  and  unlimited  power  exerted  over  us,  while  we 
exert  a  still  more  despotic  and  inexcusable  power  over  a 
dependent  and  benighted  race? 

It  was  at  about  this  point  that  the  audience  began  to  show 
unequivocal  signs  of  restlessness;  the  pot-boy  was  circulat 
ing  like  a  comet;  somebody  in  the  middle  of  the  hall  wanted 
to  know  if  the  gentleman  had  made  any  remarks  reflecting  on 
Dorr  of  Rhode  Island,1  because  Dorr  of  Rhode  Island  was  — 
"Do  you  mean  front-Dorr,  or  back-Dorr?"  some  other 
patron  of  Harmony  Hall  inquired;  references  to  all  kinds  of 
doors  flew  thick  and  fast  in  a  rising  racket;  and  a  wag  stand 
ing  near  proceeded  to  give  a  loud,  clear,  and  brilliant  imi 
tation  of  a  rooster  crowing,  being  desirous  apparently  of 
adding  his  mite  to  the  tumult,  whether  appropriately  or 
not.  It  was  a  tremendous  success  ;  in  an  instant  the 
place  roared  with  every  sort  of  farm-yard  sound:  bark 
ings,  brayings,  mooings,  gruntings,  and  snortings,  as  of 
Circe's  herds.  "  Order,  if  you  please,  my  friends  —  order  — 
one  moment  —  "  cried  Mr.  Sharpless,  startled  and  dropping 
some  of  his  papers,  a  little  confused.  "  Order,  if  you  please, 
my  friends,  order!"  repeated  the  ventriloquist,  his  neighbor, 
in  an  amazingly  exact  yet  caricatured  imitation.  Mr.  Sharp- 
less  tried  again  to  go  on;  he  had  lost  his  place.  .  .  .  " Hu 
man  brotherhood,  my  friends,  is  a  cardinal  principle  of  true 
Democracy  as  well  as  of  pure  Christianity—  "True 
Democracy  as  well  as  pure  Christianity!"  crackled  his  tor 
mentor.  "Keep  quiet,  Jim,  you  can't  do  anything,"  urged 
Burke,  grasping  his  companion's  arm.  They  were  being  a 
good  deal  hustled  and  shoved  about,  yet  there  was  nothing  to 
arouse  one  so  far;  all  this  rough  behavior  was  such  as  might 
have  been  met  with  in  a  roomful  of  uncommonly  boisterous 
schoolboys,  and  merely  conveyed  to  the  orator  in  a  suffi 
ciently  good-humored  manner  that  The  Bottoms  had  had 

1  The  newspapers  of  the  date  are  full  of  the  affair  of  Governor  Dorr 
of  Rhode  Island,  and  are  freely  recommended  to  those  who  have  the 
patience  to  read  about  it;  the  editor  had  not.  —  M.  S.  W. 


MR.   BURKE  CASTS  *HIS   FIRST  VOTE        297 

enough  of  him.  If  Mr.  Sharpless  had  taken  the  hint,  if  Jim 
had  kept  his  temper,  if  there  hadn't  been  quite  so  much  of 
White  Hat  Sam's  fire-water  going  the  rounds  —  but  to  what 
end  are  all  these  speculations  ?  The  succeeding  events  took 
place  with  a  stunning  suddenness ;  one  moment  it  was  a  lot  of 
noisy,  jolly,  blaspheming  bullies,  and  the  next  a  cage  of 
wolves,  a  den  of  hyenas !  Burke,  still  holding  his  friend's  arm, 
had  just  been  obliged  to  jerk  his  other  elbow  into  the  eye  of 
an  over-inquisitive  gentleman  who  was  feeling  in  his  vest- 
pocket,  when  they  saw  a  man,  in  a  burst  of  Harmony  Hall 
humor  shy  something  at  the  speaker  (who  was  vainly  trying 
to  continue),  some  small  object,  a  rotten  potato  or  tomato, 
perhaps.  It  struck  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless  on  the 
cheek-bone,  not  hurting  him  at  all,  I  think,  but  knocked  off 
his  glasses  and  shattered  them,  to  the  great  delight  of  the 
joker  and  those  nearest  in  the  audience  who  witnessed  this 
feat.  Sharpless  twisted  out  of  his  companion's  grip. 

"  You'll  strike  an  old  man,  will  you,  you  — !"  he  gasped 
out  in  a  fury,  gritting  his  teeth  on  a  dreadful  curse;  "take 
that,  —  you!"  And  struck  him  in  the  face  and  sent  him 
reeling.  Jim  was  not  a  very  strong  man,  and  he  hit  out  with 
no  science  at  all,  but  the  attack  took  the  other  by  surprise; 
he  went  down  on  the  steps  of  the  platform,  and  upon  the  in 
stant  Harmony  Hall  burst  into  its  brutal  rage. 

I  suppose  it  is  strange  that  we  ever  got  out  of  the  place  alive 
and  unharmed;  but  barring  bruises  and  torn  coats,  we  found 
ourselves  whole  in  the  end.  Perhaps  the  very  size  and  close 
ness  of  the  crowd  and  the  imperfect  light  saved  us ;  for  only 
comparatively  few,  and  those  in  the  front  ranks,  could  have 
seen  what  passed;  and  doubtless  in  the  minds  of  many  the 
fellow  whom  Jim  had  knocked  down  had  not  got  a  blow  amiss. 
The  Bottoms  had  very  little  sympathy  to  waste  on  the  van 
quished;  the  fight  was  the  thing  with  them.  We  charged  up 
the  steps  over  the  prostrate  foe  —  whose  nose  was  bleeding 
grandly  —  and  got  to  Mr.  Sharpless  and  each  got  hold  of  one 
of  his  arms.  "Gentlemen—  "  he  protested,  backing  away; 
without  his  glasses  he  did  not  for  a  second  recognize  either 
of  us;  he  wanted  to  go  on  with  the  speech.  "If  you  will  allow 
me,  gentlemen — !" 

"You've  got  to  come  away,  father!"  shouted  Jim  in  his  ear; 
"come  along,  I  say.  There's  a  door  over  here  — "  Another 


298  NATHAN   BURKE 

missile  hurtled  from  somewhere;  it  went  over  our  heads  and 
struck  one  of  the  lamps,  putting  it  out  in  a  fountain  of  broken 
glass.  The  singer,  with  admirable  judgment  and  agility, 
dived  down  and  crawled  on  all  fours  under  the  piano.  "By  — , 
boys,  you  better  git  th'  old  man  out  o'  this!"  he  bawled  dis 
interestedly;  and  even  in  that  wild  moment,  Burke  saw,  and 
remembered  afterwards,  how  this  kind-hearted  ruffian 
reached  out  and  dragged  poor  old  Leroux  after  him  into  a 
corner  of  safety.  Men  were  swarming  on  to  the  platform  as 
they  made  for  the  door.  It  was  securely  locked,  however,  and 
they  seemed  to  be  fairly  cornered.  Jim  shoved  Mr.  Sharp- 
less  (still  protesting!  He  was  not  in  the  least  frightened) 
behind  the  table,  and  Nat  scrambled  up  on  it,  facing  the  room 
from  this  commanding  height.  As  he  did  so  some  secret 
sympathizer  —  yes,  even  in  that  place !  —  stuffed  something 
into  his  hand;  it  was  the  butt  of  a  pistol.  "Take  it,  bub, 
take  it;  you're  going  to  need  it!"  was  growled  hoarsely  in  his 
ear.  He  never  even  saw  this  man's  face,  nor  ever  knew  who 
it  was  that  had  sought  to  befriend  him.  For  then  and  there, 
Mr.  Burke  made  what  was  practically  his  first  and  last  ap 
pearance  as  a  public  speaker.  "Men!"  he  bellowed;  and 
being  possessed  of  a  good  strong  throat  and  a  fine  pair  of 
lungs,  and  having,  moreover,  seized  by  chance  upon  a  mo 
ment  when  the  uproar  fell  a  little,  he  actually  succeeded  in 
making  himself  heard. 

"Men!"  shouted  Nat;  "somebody  has  just  handed  me 
this  pistol.  If  the  gentleman  will  step  up,  Fd  like  to  re 
turn  it  —  '  and  this  invitation  produced,  for  a  wonder,  a 
dead  silence  of  sheer  curiosity.  As  the  owner  of  the  pistol 
discreetly  preserved  his  incognito  —  "Very  well!"  said 
Burke,  and  tossed  the  weapon  out  of  the  window.  "I  don't 
think  we  need  a  pistol  in  a  gathering  of  American  citizens !" 
he  remarked  at  the  top  of  his  lungs,  and  with  the  inward  cer 
tainty  that  some  of  us,  at  any  rate,  would  never  need  pistols 
more  in  our  lives!  But  the  bluff  worked!  This  resounding 
sentiment  brought  forth  a  round  of  applause  and  encourag 
ing  yells.  "Go  on!  Speech,  speech!"  Never  was  there 
such  a  violent  reversal  of  popular  feeling;  it  was  but  mo 
mentary,  as  Burke  knew;  yet,  looking  down  on  them,  of  a 
sudden  he  perceived  that  this  pack  of  rascals  were  at  least  as 
much  fools  as  knaves.  They  were  flighty  and  inconsequent, 


MR.    BURKE   CASTS   HIS   FIRST   VOTE        299 

like  a  flock  of  sparrows;  at  once  silly  and  bloody-minded, 
turning  from  one  excitement  to  another  with  an  incredible 
childishness. 

"I'm  not  here  to  do  any  talking,"  he  said;  "I  only  want  to 
say  that  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless  is  ready  to  go  on  if 
you—" 

"Aw,  shut  him  up  !  Say,  sonny,  does  yer  mother  know^yer 
out?"  shouted  somebody.  And  Burke,  looking  in  that 
direction,  discovered  it  to  be  the  proprietor,  White  Hat  Sam 
himself,  who,  for  some  reason  of  his  own,  did  not  appear  to  be 
over-pleased  with  the  peaceable  face  affairs  were  now  be 
ginning  to  wear. 

"You  were  saying,  sir?"  inquired  Nat,  civilly. 

"Shut  up,  we  don't  want  to  be  gassed  at  by  no  boys  like 
you.  By  God,  young  feller,  I  was  making  my  living  before 
you  were  born!" 

"Well,  then,  by  God,  sir,  you  haven't  made  it  since!" 
retorted  Burke,  briskly.  And  this  not  particularly  brilliant 
repartee,  addressed  to  White  Hat  Sam,  who  probably  had 
never  done  a  stroke  of  honest  labor  in  his  life,  moved  our 
fellow-citizens  to  a  frenzied  hilarity.  Lo,  who  so  well-liked 
now  as  Mr.  Burke  and  his  supporters?  They  were  actually 
willing  to  hear  Mr.  Sharpless  out,  but  the  minister  himself 
seemed  to  have  changed  his  mind  and  refused  in  a  few  grave 
words.  The  singer  came  out  of  retirement  (leaving  Leroux, 
who  was  dead  drunk  by  this  time,  and  snoring  peacefully) 
and  struck  up  "Whigs  of  the  Union,"  which  was  set  to  the 
tune  of  the  "  Marseillaise,"  and  under  cover  of  its  enthusiastic 
chorus  we  all  three  got  away  at  last.  Mr.  Sharpless  said 
not  a  word  on  the  trip  home.  The  stars  were  shining  as  we 
parted  from  him  at  the  gate,  but  it  was  too  dusky  beneath 
the  low-branched  maples  along  the  sidewalk  by  the  parsonage 
to  distinguish  his  expression. 

"I  wish  you  good-night,  gentlemen.  I  thank  you  both," 
he  said. 

"I  hope,  Mr.  Sharpless,  you  —  you  are  not  going  to  speak 
in  that  neighborhood  again  ?  "  said  Burke,  hesitating. 

"I  am  not.  Sir,  I  have  made  my  last  speech,"  said  the 
minister.  He  kept  his  word.  Outside  the  pulpit,  he  never 
spoke  publicly  again. 


300  NATHAN   BURKE 

The  election  for  governor  was  held  the  second  week  in 
October  at  that  time,  in  advance  of  the  Presidential  by  three 
or  four  weeks;  and  it  served,  we  used  to  think,  as  a  sort  of 
feeling  of  the  political  pulse.  Nobody  had  ever  heard  of 
registration  as  yet,  and  we  understood  there  was  a  rousing 
trade  in  ballot-stuffing,  in  repeating,  in  illegal  naturalization, 
in  chicanery,  bribery,  and  corruption  of  all  kinds;  the  papers 
on  both  sides  were  full  of  gloomy  warnings  against  it;  no 
candidate,  according  to  the  opposition,  was  ever  elected  with 
out  a  most  barefaced  and  vicious  resort  to  these  methods.  In 
this  campaign,  BRITISH  GOLD  first  appeared  as  an  awful 
agent  of  corruption,  the  most  astonishing  thing  about  it  being 
the  naivete  with  which  we  complained  of  being  corrupted! 
Not  yet  has  that  ridiculous  old  spectre  been  laid.  But  Messrs. 
Sharpless  and  Burke  were  perhaps  not  in  a  position  to  pass 
judgment  on  these  statements;  nobody  approached  with 
offers  to  corrupt  them  in  behalf  of  either  Clay  or  Polk.  They 
went  soberly  and  cast  their  maiden  votes;  Ohio  went  Whig, 
securing  twenty-three  votes  in  the  electoral  college  for  Clay. 
Hurrah,  hurrah,  the  country's  risin'  — ! 

Alas  for  all  these  high  expectations!  Look  on  this  picture 
—  and  now  on  this !  Alas  for  Henry  Clay,  for  his  single- 
minded  followers,  for  Ewing,  for  Corwin,  for  Samuel  Gwynne 
(the  latter  retired  from  public  life  after  this  campaign),  for 
everybody  who  had  talked  his  throat  out  in  the  good  cause, 
and  contributed  his  money,  and  spent  his  time !  In  a  month 
how  were  we  all  dashed  by  the  news  that  the  Polk-stalks,  the 
Polk-berries,  the  Loco-focos,  the  Coon-catchers,  had  triumphed 
after  all!  "  We  are  beaten,  badly  beaten,"  said  the  Journal, 
in  dignified  mourning;  "but  let  us  not  despair.  Let  us  not 
cease  to  do  our  utmost  as  good  citizens,  and'whatever  comes, 
even  the  worst  results  of  our  adversaries'  blind  and  reckless 
policy,  even  WAR  with  all  its  train  of  horrors,  even  BANK 
RUPTCY  and  DESPOTISM,  let  us,  etc.  .  .  ." 

"If  we  should  have  war  over  Oregon  or  Texas,  would  you 
go,  Nat,"  his  friend  asked  him. 

"Why,  yes  —  yes,  I  suppose  so.  But,  pshaw,  it's  all  talk  — 
we  won't  have  any  war." 


CHAPTER  XXII 
CONTAINS  BOTH  PEACE  AND  WAR 

ALL  this  time,  with  a  culpable  negligence,  I  have  forgot 
even  to  glance  at  the  affairs  of  Mr.  George  Marsh  Ducey  — 
surely  of  no  slight  moment  to  this  history.  The  fact  is, 
Nathan,  who  was  a  busy,  or,  at  least,  an  industrious  young 
man,  had  latterly  seen  very  little  of  George,  for  whose  society 
he  did  not  have  a  strong  inclination  —  the  feeling  was  mu 
tual,  without  a  doubt.  We  had  worn  out  that  ancient  joke 
about  George's  prowess  in  the  ranks  of  medicine;  for,  dis 
gusted  with  the  narrowness  of  Vardaman's  views,  and  his 
contemptible  prejudice  against  rising  talent,  George  had 
left  the  doctor's  office.  He  shook  the  dust  of  that  poor  abode 
of  small  scholarship  and  less  skill  from  his  feet;  he  was  by 
nature  too  compassionate  and  too  sensitive  to  the  sight  of 
suffering  ever  to  have  relished  the  calling  anyhow,  he  said. 
There  was  a  kind  of  crooked  truth  in  the  statement.  As 
a  boy,  Burke  remembered  to  have  seen  George  faint  at  the 
sight  of  fresh  blood;  and  whereas  the  other  boys  gathered 
in  a  ghoulish  mob  to  witness  the  decapitation  of  poultry  or 
drowning  of  superfluous  kittens,  George  would  run  screaming 
to  his  mother  from  the  horrid  spectacle.  So  he  left  Varda- 
man  finally  after  about  fifteen  or  eighteen  months  in  the  doc 
tor's  office,  as  nearly  as  I  recollect,  and  for  a  while  returned  to 
the  store,  where  he  probably  was  as  valuable  as  he  had  been 
in  Burke's  day,  and  certainly  even  more  ornamental.  As 
George  grew  older  his  taste  for  dress  and  the  minute  ele 
gancies  of  life  developed  to  a  high  degree.  His  choice  in 
cravats,  upholstery,  ladies'  bonnets,  was  well-nigh  infallible; 
his  mother  relied  on  him  to  match  her  silks  and  worsteds  to  a 
shade  —  and,  at  a  pinch,  he  could  have  worked  with  them 
upon  her  embroidery-frame,  I  dare  say.  No  pent-up 

301 


302  NATHAN   BURKE 

Utica  contracted  George's  powers,  a  whole  unbounded  con 
tinent  of  accomplishments  was  his  —  to  parody  the  hand 
some  motto  which  Mr.  Park  Benjamin  had  selected  for  his 
paper,  the  New  World,  published  about  this  time.  Work 
at  the  store  palling  on  him  after  an  interval,  as  I  have  hinted, 
the  next  thing  we  heard  was  that  George  was  studying  law; 
myself  have  seen  him,  hurrying  along  the  street,  intent, 
abstracted,  with  a  forehead  corrugated  like  a  Greek  column, 
and  a  green  baize  bag  bulging  with  books  and  papers  under 
one  arm,  fruit  of  his  legal  studies.  He  too  was  in  Governor 
Gwynne's  office  !  For  let  nobody  imagine  for  an  instant  that 
George  did  not  display  any  stern  masculine  traits;  it  is 
possible  for  a  man  to  be,  as  he  was,  extraordinarily  proficient 
in  the  gracious  arts  of  dancing  and  dressing  and  matching 
ribbons,  while  at  the  same  time  a  very  serious,  valorous, 
formidable  member  of  society.  He  was  not  eligible  to  vote 
at  this  last  election,  although  he  must  certainly  have  felt 
himself  competent  to  direct  the  policy  of  either  candidate, 
having  given  the  subject,  as  he  himself  told  Mr.  Burke,  a 
thorough  and  exhaustive  study;  but  he  attended  some  of 
the  meetings.  You  might  see  George  in  an  erect  attitude 
at  some  conspicuous  corner  with  his  arms  folded,  listening 
to  the  orator  with  a  fatigued  smile,  or  an  occasional  slight 
critical  and  thoughtful  frown,  and  glancing  about  tolerantly 
when  others  applauded.  George  never  applauded.  He 
was  only  moved  to  pity  by  the  view  of  so  many  of  his  fellow- 
citizens  so  easily  wrought  upon  by  the  feeble  logic  which  he 
could  have  exposed  and  demolished  in  three  words.  His 
leanings  were  distinctly  Democratic;  according  to  him  the 
one  fact  in  Clay's  favor  was  that  ingrained  habit  of  satisfy 
ing  an  insult  with  bloodshed,  which  most  people  condemned ! 
"Pooh,  what  would  they  have  a  man  do?"  cried  out  George, 
with  spirit;  "sit  down  patiently  under  a  blow  or  an  affront! 
I'd  like  to  see  anybody  try  it  on  with  me,  that's  all!" 

Naturally  enough,  holding  these  sentiments,  Mr.  Ducey 
was  a  vigorous  opponent  of  British  aggression.  "Fifty-four- 
f orty-or-fight "  was,  as  one  might  say,  the  breath  of  his 
nostrils;  he  used  to  quote,  with  a  devout  rage,  all  the  clamors 
of  our  press  about  English  interference  on  this  continent: 
.  .  .  .  "We  now  hear  that  Great  Britain  has  advised 
Mexico  under  no  circumstances  to  acknowledge  the  inde- 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR          303 

pendence  of  Texas;  but  to  keep  up  an  armistice  with  her  as 
long  as  possible;  and  in  case  of  a  successful  attempt  at  an 
nexation,  then  to  go  to  war  and  England  would  back  her  in 
the  contest! !!" 

"By  heavens,  it  makes  my  blood  boil!"  says  George, 
savagely,  pulling  up  his  shirt-collar  and  throwing  out  his 
chest  as  he  gazes  around  the  peaceful  family-circle  seated  at 
dinner,  after  reading  out  this  trustworthy  piece  of  news; 
"by  heavens,  if  I  was  Polk,  I  know  what  Pd  do!"  His 
mother,  knowing  George's  martial  tastes  —  he  lately  joined 
a  militia  company  in  high  repute  with  us,  the  "Montgomery 
Guards,"  knew  more  about  military  dress  and  accoutrements 
than  any  living  mortal  except  the  tailors,  and  paraded  on  the 
Fourth  of  July  in  all  his  gilt  braid  and  regimentals,  the  most 
dashing  and  distinguished  soldier  of  the  lot  —  his  mother  looks 
at  him  with  fearful  and  tender  eyes.  Even  Francie,  who  is  not 
an  imaginative  young  woman,  appears  to  be  somewhat  im 
pressed.  Old  George  Marsh  alone  sits  there,  callously  sopping 
his  bread  in  gravy  and  eating  his  stewed  corn  with  a  spoon,  quite 
unmoved  by  George's  heroic  utterances.  He  lost  his  last 
tooth  the  other  day,  and  is  seriously  handicapped  in  his  eating, 
not  being  able  to  endure  the  set  of  false  "uppers  and  lowers" 
he  sent  for  to  New  York.  He  complained  to  Burke  that,  by 
damn,  he  paid  a  hundred  and  twenty  dollars  for  'em,  and 
never  had  a  minute's  comfort  out  of  'em;  they  kept  jumping 
up  and  getting  crossways  in  his  mouth,  by  damn!  He 
looks  up,  raising  his  shaggy  old  eyebrows  in  that  familiar 
gesture:  "Knock  the  stuffing  out  of  'em,  hey,  George?" 
he  says.  "You  ain't  any  use  for  British  gold,  nor  British 
anything,  have  you?" 

"Sir,  from  any  one  else  that  would  be  an  insult!"  says 
George,  majestically. 

"All  right,  all  right,"  says  his  uncle,  in  an  humble  voice, 
but  grinning  a  truly  Satanic  grin;  "I  just  wanted  to  know. 
I'm  English  myself,  and  I  don't  want  to  make  any  mistake 
and  leave  my  money  where  it  ain't  wanted,  that's  all!"  At 
which  Mr.  George's  wrath  cools  off  with  surprising  rapidity 
and  a  rather  blank  look  on  the  young  gentleman's  face. 

"You  oughtn't  to  get  irritated  at  Uncle  George,"  his 
mother  warns  him  afterwards;  "he's  getting  very  old  and 
feeble,  you  know." 


304  NATHAN   BURKE 

It  was  Jim  Sharpless  from  whom  Burke  used  to  hear  the 
details  of  these  and  like  conversations.  Jim  was  a  pretty 
constant  visitor  at  the  house;  it  was  always  full  nowadays, 
as  in  the  years  of  Nathan's  first  acquaintance  with  it,  of 
young  men,  pretty  girls,  children,  singing  and  laughing, 
pianos  going,  guitars  thrumming.  Sharpless  could  mimic 
the  older  and  younger  Ducey,  mimic  old  George,  and  every 
body  else  to  perfection,  sparing  no  one  but  Mrs.  Ducey,  for 
whom  he  had  a  chivalric  devotion,  and  —  and  Miss  Frances 
Blake.  He  talked,  I  think,  a  good  deal  about  Miss  Frances 
Blake,  although  Burke,  who  was  quite  selfishly  absorbed  in 
a  certain  sentimental  affair  of  his  own,  never  noticed  it. 
Jim  said  she  could  play  the  piano  better  than  any  one  he 
knew.  " Better  than  your  sister?"  said  Burke,  in  wonder. 
As  if  any  piano-playing  could  equal  hers!  Well,  no,  not  better 
than  Mary,  perhaps,  but  Francie's  —  Miss  Blake's,  you 
know  —  was  different.  And  then  she  had  a  very  sweet 
voice,  too;  you  ought  to  hear  her  sing:  " True  love  can  ne'er 
forget."  -"But  I  suppose  you  have  heard  her,"  Jim  said 
with  a  quick  sigh,  and  fell  silent.  "I  wish  I  could  make 
a  lot  of  money,  Nat,"  he  said,  rousing  himself  again.  "Well, 
I  will  some  day,  you  see!  I  might  close  with  that  Tribune 
offer  —  I  might  go  to  New  York  —  only — "  and  again  he 
was  silent,  drumming  with  his  fingers  on  the  table.  "By 
George,  I'll  show  'em  yet!"  he  burst  out:  "'For  his  spirit  it 
was  tre-men-ju-ous  —  "  and  went  to  correcting  proofs  with 
a  laugh. 

His  mood,  however,  was  not  always  so  genial;  sometimes 
he  was  depressed,  sometimes  severe,  sometimes  merely  irri 
table,  alternations  of  temper  which  Burke,  not  at  all  realizing 
that  they  mirrored  some  of  his  own,  and  are  perhaps  com 
mon  to  all  lovers,  observed  with  bewilderment.  It  seems 
to  me  now  that  if  he  had  used  his  eyes  and  ears,  to  say  noth 
ing  of  his  intelligence,  he  might  have  known  what  ailed  Jim, 
and  been  a  little  more  sympathetic. 

"She  looked  so  pretty  to-night,  Nat,  so  pretty.  She  had 
on  some  kind  of  a  little  dress  with  pink  rosebuds  spotted  all 
over  it,  and  —  and  pink  ribbons  somewhere,  I  think  — ' 

"She?  Who?  Who're  you  talking  about?"  asked  that 
thick-headed  Nathan,  looking  up  from  his  brief,  agog  at 
these  millinery  statistics  from  Jim. 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR         305 

"Why,  Francie,  of  course,"  said  the  other,  a  little  impa 
tiently;  "I've  just  come  from  there,  you  know.  George 
was  at  home.  I  left  him  on  the  front  porch,  braying  co 
piously,"  Jim  added  with  venom;  "the  idea  of  that  fellow 
being  with  her  —  being  in  the  house  where  he  can  see  her  all 
the  time!  I  believe  she  sees  through  George,  though;  she's 
known  him  all  her  life;  she  must  know  all  about  him,  being 
brought  up  with  him  that  way  —  just  the  kind  of  donkey 
he  is,  don't  you  think  so,  Nat?" 

Sharpless,  indeed,  took  a  malign  pleasure  in  drawing 
George  out,  and,  as  it  were,  parading  him  before  the  company 
—  or  before  Francie,  for  all  his  efforts  were  directed  with 
one  eye  on  that  young  person's  good  graces.  Perhaps  she 
did  not  always  understand  all  of  Jim's  sober  irony  ;  I  believe 
she  was  a  little  afraid  of  him  even  when  he  was  writing 
sprightly  little  epigrams  in  her  album,  and  putting  new 
words  to  her  songs,  and  telling  his  gay  stories,  and  drawing 
absurd  sketches  that  made  her  laugh  till  she  cried.  One 
of  them,  which  I  have  seen,  depicted  Jim  himself,  a  mon 
strous  caricature,  gaunt  and  lath-like,  supporting  Francie 
in  a  sort  of  heraldic  attitude  upon  the  back  of  a  chair.  "The 
artist  cannot  do  justice  to  the  female  figure  in  this  design," 
he  said  gravely.  "Don't  you  remember?  It  is  a  great  his 
toric  occasion  —  a  Fourth  of  July  celebration  in  the  old 
Methodist  church  years  and  years  ago,  when  you  were  a 
wee  little  girl  and  were  going  to  be  smothered  to  death  in  the 
crowd,  and  I  helped  you  up  to  the  back  of  the  pew  and  held 
you  —  don't  you  remember  ?  "  asked  the  young  man,  with  his 
dark  eyes  on  her  wistfully. 

"Mercy,  no!"  said  Francie,  reddening. 

"I've  never  forgotten  it,"  Jim  said. 

"She  remembers  everything  you  used  to  do,  Nathan, 
every  single  thing,  and  often  speaks  about  it,"  he  afterwards 
said,  in  reciting  this  scene;  and  looked  at  his  friend  oddly. 

"Well,  that  wouldn't  be  saying  much.  I  never  did  any 
thing  particularly  startling  that  I  know  of,"  Nat  said  with  a 
laugh;  "and  I  wasn't  much  of  a  hand  to  talk  in  those  days. 
It's  only  because  I  was  around  the  place  for  two  years,  and 
left  a  brilliant  memory.  By  jingo,  sir,  you  don't  realize 
that  I  was  the  best  chore-boy  the  Duceys  ever  had  !" 

In  fact,  the  family  made  Mr.  Burke  welcome  enough  when 


306  NATHAN   BURKE 

he  went  there  in  his  altered  role  nowadays  —  o,  quantum 
mutatus  ab  illo  Hectore!  as  Jack  Vardaman  would  have  said 
—  Mr.  Ducey  and  George  with  a  delicate,  patronizing,  and 
almost  protecting  kindness;  Mrs.  Ducey  with  a  species  of 
careful  and  stilted  good  manners  that  made  Burke  want  to 
laugh.  She  was  incapable  of  disguising  the  fact  that  for  all 
people  said  (yes,  even  Francie's  girl-friends,  and  her  own 
friends,  their  mammas,  said  it!)  about  young  Burke  being  a 
sufficiently  well-behaved  man,  and  doing  nicely  in  his  pro 
fession,  she  never  could  forget  what  he  had  been;  and  equally 
incapable  of  understanding  that  he  was  not  at  all  touchy 
on  the  subject,  nor  anxious  for  her  to  forget  that  time. 
"I  declare  I  never  know  what  to  say  —  it's  like  walking  on 
eggs,"  Burke  once  overheard  the  poor  lady  complaining  to  a 
friend.  "Why,  my  dear,  he  used  to  milk  our  cow!  And 
here  he  is  sitting  in  the  parlor,  not  a  bit  different  from  any 
body  else.  All  the  young  men  know  him  and  treat  him  the 
same  as  one  of  themselves,  you  know.  I'm  so  afraid  I'll 
mention  the  cow  or  the  chore-boy  or  something  of  the  sort 
before  him  —  of  course,  it  wouldn't  really  be  any  harm,  but 
I  want  to  be  kind.  It's  like  when  you  meet  a  Jewish  person 
or  somebody  that's  been  divorced,  you  know,  something 
always  seems  to  impel  you  to  talk  about  Jews  or  divorced 
people  I  Mercy,  I've  done  that  so  many  times  —  and  lain 
awake  thinking  about  it,  and  wondering  whether  they  were 
mad  at  me,  all  night  long,  haven't  you  ?  Uncle  George  says 
I  needn't  worry,  because  Nathan  wouldn't  mind  a  bit  if  I 
talked  about  chore-boys  the  whole  livelong  time  —  but  I'm 
always  considerate  of  people's  feelings.  I  think  I  can  say  that 
much  of  myself  anyhow.  What  ?  Oh,  yes,  he's  doing  very 
well,  they  say.  Quite  a  practice  for  a  young  fellow." 

Burke  caught  this  exposition  of  Mrs.  Ducey's  views, 
through  the  open  parlor  window  as  he  sat  with  Francie  on  the 
porch  a  summer  evening;  and  both  of  them,  lacking  the  pres 
ence  of  mind  to  cough  or  otherwise  give  notice  of  their  near 
neighborhood,  there  they  sat  in  some  confusion  throughout 
the  entire  speech,  delivered  in  Mrs.  Ducey's  clear  and  ring 
ing  tones.  Little  Francie's  face  was  a  fine  red,  her  eyes 
avoided  Nat's,  even  when  she  saw  the  young  man  smiling 
broadly. 

"Aunt  Anne  doesn't  —  that  is,  she  —  she  doesn't  mean, 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR          307 

Mr.  Burke  —  I  mean — "  she  faltered.  Nathan  looked  at 
her  sweet,  shy,  distressed  face  with  a  sudden  deep  tenderness. 
From  the  beginning  he  had  felt  like  an  elder  brother  to  this 
little  girl.  She  was  his  first  friend;  he  even  had  a  fancy 
that  but  for  her  he  might  never  have  been  what  he  now  was; 
the  kind  little  hands  had  a  firm  hold  on  his  heart-strings. 
And  Francie  grown-up,  in  long  trains,  with  rosettes  and  lace 
capes  and  artificial  flowers  and  a  dozen  wonderful  fal-lals, 
was  no  different  from  Francie  in  pantalettes,  with  her  thick 
brown  hair  braided  down  her  back,  as  wholesome,  as  grave, 
straightforward,  simple,  and  tender-hearted.  He  tried  to  tell 
her  something  of  this,  awkwardly,  yet  secure  of  her  sym 
pathy  if  not  of  her  understanding. 

"Why,  Francie,"  he  said,  forgetting  the  "Miss  Blake " 
with  which  he  had  schooled  himself  to  address  her;  "you 
didn't  think  I  could  be  hurt  by  that  talk  of  your  aunt's  ? 
It's  true  I  myself  seldom  talk  about  the  time  when  I  was 
your  uncle's  hired  man;  but  it  seems  to  me  it  would  be  as 
silly  to  ram  that  down,  people's  throats  as  it  would  be  to  be 
ashamed  of  it.  It  makes  me  think  of  a  story  Jim  Sharpless 
tells  about  Geor  —  about  some  fellow  that  told  him  he  was 
a  gentleman.  'Sir,  do  you  know  I'm  a  gentleman?'  says 
this  man.  'All  right,  that  settles  it,'  said  Jim;  'when  a 
man  tells  you  he's  a  gentleman,  that  ends  the  argument. 
I  haven't  got  anything  more  to  say,  sir!'  Now  you  tell 
Mrs.  Ducey,  won't  you,  that  she  needn't  fight  shy  of  the 
subject.  I  was  her  hired  man.  Amen.  I'm  not  any  more. 
I  believe  I'm  too  good  for  a  hired  man  —  but  I'm  not  going 
to  go  around  blowing  about  it  one  way  or  the  other.  People 
always  find  their  level,  and  end  by  being  taken  for  what  they 
are.  There  —  there's  hardly  a  person  in  the  world  that  I'd 
talk  to  like  this  about  myself  except  you-  '  he  added,  a 
little  embarrassed,  as  he  realized  on  a  sudden  the  heat  and 
energy  of  his  words.  Francie  made  an  abrupt  movement. 

"Is  —  is  that  so,  Nathan?  Wouldn't  you  really?"  she 
asked.  She  had  been  playing  with  the  pink  ribbons  of  her 
dress  —  it  may  have  been  that  very  dress  Jim  had  so  ad 
mired —  rolling  them  up  and  smoothing  them  out  again; 
and  she  now  looked  up  quickly  and  very  earnestly  with  her 
eyes  on  the  other's  face. 

"Of  course  it's  so.     You've  always  understood  even  when 


308  NATHAN   BURKE 

you  were  a  little  thing  —  there  never  will  be  anybody  quite 
the  same  to  me  as  you,  Francie  —  you  don't  mind  my  telling 
you  that,  do  you  —  ?" 

"No,  I  —  I  don't  mind,"  said  Francie  in  a  small  voice; 
and  leaned  back  with  her  face  in  the  shadow  of  the  vine. 

"I  never  had  a  sister  —  but  I  like  to  pretend  that  if  I  had, 
she'd  be  just  like  you,  your  age,  and  —  and  just  the  way 
you  are,"  said  Nat.  "Don't  you  remember  your  quarter? 
I've  got  it  still;  I'm  going  to  keep  it  always.  You  once  said 
you'd  like  me  to  when  I  was  going  away  and  wouldn't  be 
chore-boy  any  more  —  do  you  remember  that  ?  You  were 
always  the  dearest  little  girl,  always!" 

"Oh,  you've  said  that  hundreds  of  times  !"  said  Francie, 
jumping  up;  "I'm  tired  of  —  of  sitting  here.  I  want  to  go 
in  where  the  others  are  —  let's  go  in!" 

So  they  went  in,  Burke  more  or  less  worried  at  some  inex 
plicable  change  in  her  manner,  and  observing  that  she  did, 
in  fact,  look  weary  and  out  of  spirits  in  the  strong  lamp 
light.  But  she  revived  presently  when  Sharpless  came  in, 
and  was  quite  gay  and  vivacious  for  the  rest  of  the  evening. 
Nat  and  his  friend  did  not  often  meet  at  this  house  to  which 
the  latter  seemed  so  attracted,  Burke  preferring  the  parlor 
and  piano  and  society  of  another  young  lady,  whom  he 
visited  nowadays  more  frequently  and  with  much  more  con 
fidence  than  heretofore.  Did  Jim  notice  it?  Somehow 
or  other  her  brother  is  the  last  person  on  earth  in  whom  a 
lover  will  confide.  And  although  Nat  had  scarcely  a  thought 
or  plan  which  he  did  not  talk  over  with  Sharpless,  he  never 
mentioned  this  dearest  thought,  this  most  cherished  plan  of 
all.  No;  instead,  Mr.  Burke  must  hunt  up  an  unfortunate 
youth,  that  same  young  Lewis  with  whom  he  had  made  his 
legal  studies,  and  pour  out  to  him  all  his  hopes,  fears,  raptures. 
In  after  years  he  blushed  to  recall  this  folly;  hardly  could  he 
recognize  his  own  normally  sober  and  taciturn  character 
under  this  obsession.  He  has  sat  in  shame  and  admiring 
astonishment,  remembering  the  unfailing  patience,  and  good- 
humor,  and  serious  attention  with  which  the  other  received 
him.  It  would  seem  as  if  a  young  man  must  talk  at  such  a 
time  or  burst,  boil  over  with  his  frank  and  fervid  egotism 
• — I  —  my  —  me  —  she!  One  trembles  to  figure  what 
might  happen  if  he  could  not  thus  relieve  himself;  and  un- 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR         309 

luckily  for  Lewis,  Mr.  Nat  could  not,  for  obvious  reasons, 
employ  his  other  close  friend,  Dr.  Vardaman,  as  a  safety- 
valve. 

Yet  Jack  was  no  longer  to  be  regarded  as  a  dangerous  rival ; 
he  was  some  years  the  senior  of  us  all,  and  fast  becoming, 
in  the  popular  estimation,  a  settled  old  bachelor.  Already 
he  displayed  certain  middle-aged  tastes  about  his  table, 
his  wine,  his  clothes.  Jack  Vardaman  would  never  marry 
anybody,  people  said,  and  they  would  pity  the  girl  if  he  did; 
he  was  just  as  set!  But  that  old  affair  with  Louise  Gwynne 
—  Louise  Andrews  —  six  or  seven  years  ago,  that  finished 
Jack  Vardaman;  he'd  never  look  at  another  woman.  He 
liked  to  stay  at  home  in  the  evenings,  reading  his  worn,  dog's- 
eared,  and  be-pencilled  copy  of  Horace,  while  Miss  Clara 
knitted  tidies  by  the  lamp  on  the  other  side  of  the  mahogany 
table,  and  the  cat  purred  on  the  hassock  between  them. 
They  lived  in  great  comfort ;  the  doctor  spent  a  good  deal  of 
money  on  his  hobbies  —  a  trait  which,  of  itself,  indicated 
that  he  had  not  the  makings  of  a  first-rate  husband  and  family 
man.  He  had  cases  of  books  sent  out  to  him  from  Paris, 
London,  Amsterdam;  and  portfolios  of  beautiful  steel- 
engravings  and  prints  —  "what  he  wants  with  them  I'm 
sure  I  don't  know,"  his  sister  said  in  gentle  complaint; 
"ever  so  many  of  the  books  are  dreadful  old  things  with 
those  worn-out  leather  bindings  that  come  off  in  crumbs  all 
over  his  clothes  —  he  says  they're  first  editions,  you  know, 
and  for  all  they're  so  shabby,  it  positively  scares  me  to  think 
of  the  prices  he  pays  for  them.  And  those  pictures  have  to 
stay  in  the  portfolios,  Mr.  Burke  —  he  won't  hear  of  having 
them  framed  —  such  a  job  to  dust  and  take  care  of  !  Not 
that  I  mind,  of  course;  I  love  to  do  things  for  John,"  she 
added  hastily. 

Miss  Clara  had  got  over  all  her  first  diffidence  with  Burke; 
his  companionship  with  the  doctor,  his  frequent  appearance 
at  her  well-provided  and  always  most  beautifully  appointed 
table,  the  good-feeling  manifested  towards  him  by  her  poodle 
and  Angora  —  all  these  things  had  gradually  made  a  place 
for  him  in  her  maidenly  heart.  He  never  came  in  without 
carefully  dusting  off  his  boots  —  he  was  punctual  to  the 
moment  when  invited  to  a  meal  —  he  took  off  his  coat  and 
hung  a  picture  for  her  —  he  had  such  nice  white  teeth  — 


310  NATHAN   BURKE 

what  higher  recommendations  could  a  young  man  need? 
Burke,  himself  was  genuinely  fond  of  the  doctor's  sister, 
who,  for  all  her  naivete  and  her  odd  little  nervous  ways, 
was  a  kind  and  sensible -and  not  at  all  dull  woman;  and, 
strange  to  say,  much  more  tolerant  of  masculine  practices 
and  peculiarities  and  faults  than  many  an  experienced  wife 
and  mother.  "I  have  my  sister  very  well  trained,"  Jack 
used  to  say,  sitting  at  his  end  of  the  table  and  looking  over 
the  handsome  silver  and  glassware  to  where  Miss  Clara 
smiled  at  him  from  behind  the  urn;  " observe,  gentlemen: 
she  has  no  objection  to  the  institution  of  the  night-key,  that 
familiar  bone  of  contention.  She  would  let  me  keep  my  boots 
on  the  parlor  mantelpiece,  if  I  wanted  to.  When  I  smash 
my  thumb-nail  with  the  hammer  and  swear  ferociously,  she 
merely  remarks,  '  Oh,  dear ! '  and  fetches  the  arnica  — 

"You  know  you  never  swear,  John!"  cried  out  Miss  Clara; 
"it's  just  his  fun,  Mr.  Sharpless.  And  besides,  he  was  open 
ing  that  last  case  of  books  and  the  hammer  slipped  and  hurt 
him  dreadfully  —  anybody  would  have  sworn  —  Jack  couldn't 
help  it." 

"She  sees  no  harm  in  a  drink  or  a  game  of  billiards," 
pursued  Vardaman.  "  Is  there  a  woman  in  this  town  of  whom 
you  could  say  that?" 

"Really,  John,  you'll  make  them  think  I'm  awful,"  said 
Miss  Vardaman,   anxiously;    "I  know  men  oughtn't  to — 
but,  dear  me,  I've  done  awfully  bad  things  in  my  life,  too 
—  not  drinking  nor  playing  billiards,  you  know,  but  things 
I  oughtn't  to  have  done,  and  — 

The  doctor  got  up  from  his  chair  and  went  to  her,  and  took 
her  pretty  hand  and  kissed  it  with  a  grave  bow  and  flourish. 
"Take  that,  oh,  very  bad  woman,  you  who  spend  your  whole 
life  making  me  such  a  very  good  home,"  he  said.  "  Gentlemen, 
tell  the  truth:  Did  you  ever  see  so  happy  a  married  couple?" 

And  as  the  friends  paced  home  that  night,  smoking  in 
the  pleasant  summer  darkness,  they  remarked  to  each  other, 
as  they  had  many  times  before,  that  from  one  point  of  view 
Vardaman  would  make  a  great  mistake  to  marry.  No  wife 
would  give  him  his  sister's  worship,  her  unselfish  devotion, 
her  tireless  thought.  But,  to  tell  the  truth,  there  seemed 
to  be  very  little  prospect  of  marriage  for  either  one  of  them. 
Miss  Clara  would  not  have  dreamed  of  deserting  her  brother, 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR          311 

and  it  looked  less  and  less  likely  that  Jack  would  ever  make 
a  change. 

"I'm  so  glad  the  doctor  won't  go  to  the  war,"  she  told 
Burke  one  day;  "at  least  he's  promised  me  he  won't  —  I 
made  him  promise  me,  and  John  always  keeps  his  word!" 
She  was  very  much  excited,  with  a  bright  color  in  her  fading 
cheeks;  her  knitting-needles  rattled  tremulously.  Burke 
looked  at  her  in  amazement  and  some  perplexity. 

"  War  ?"  he  said;  "where  ?  what  war  ?" 

"Why,  with  —  with  Texas  —  no,  I  mean  it's  Mexico,  isn't 
it,  Mr.  Burke  ?  Or  with  England  —  anyway,  Jack  says  it's 
bound  to  come,  so  I  made  him  promise  he  wouldn't  enlist. 
And  Mr.  Sharplese's  sermon  last  Sunday  —  you  were  there, 
weren't  you,  I  thought  I  saw  you  walking  home  with  Mary 
—  about *  woe  to  them  that  devise  iniquity,  and  about  their 
coveting  the  fields  and  taking  them  away  by  violence,  was 
just  meant  for  Texas  or  the  Mexicans  or  the  English,  I  don't 
know  which,  but  everybody  said  so."  She  paused,  out  of 
breath,  knitting  vehemently. 

"Oh,  well,  we're  not  at  war  yet.  I  guess  we'd  better  not 
cross  that  bridge  till  we  come  to  it,  had  we?"  said  Burke, 
amused.  "Anyhow,  it  won't  be  with  England,  Miss  Varda- 
man;  it  will  be  with  Mexico,  —  and  we  won't  have  any  trouble 
licking  them,"  said  the  young  fellow,  arrogantly,  voicing  the 
supreme  self-confidence  of  his  day. 

"But  I  thought  they  were  saying  all  that  about  the  Eng 
lish  wanting  to  fight  us  in  —  in  Mexico,  on  account  of  their 
wanting  to  be  annexed,  you  know,"  said  poor  Miss  Clara, 
helplessly;  "I  can't  get  it  straight  in  my  head  somehow." 

"No  wonder.  That's  just  all  newspaper  talk  —  just 
balderdash!"  Burke  explained  contemptuously;  "the 
Texans  do  want  to  be  annexed,  there  can't  be  any  doubt 
about  that,  and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  there'd  be  trouble  on 
that  account,  maybe,  —  not  war,  you  know,  but  serious  trouble. 
But  Great  Britain  would  be  neutral  in  any  case.  Don't 
you  remember  that  letter  of  the  English  Prime  Minister,  or 
whatever  his  position  is,  Lord  Aberdeen?  Where  he  said 
they'd  be  glad  to  see  Texas  admitted  if  slavery  were  to  be 
done  away  with,  but  that  England  would  keep  out  of  it, 

'SeeMicahii.  1,  2. 


312  NATHAN   BURKE 

because  it  wasn't  any  of  her  affair  —  words  to  that  effect, 
you  know.  He  was  perfectly  honest  and  meant  every  word 
of  it,  and  I  thought  it  was  a  fine  letter,"  declared  Mr.  Burke, 
with  warmth;  " we're  all  the  time  marching  around  with  a 
chip  on  our  shoulder. " 

"Why,  no,  you  haven't  any  chip,  Mr.  Burke  —  I'm  sure 
I  never  saw  anybody  with  a  chip!"  said  Miss  Clara,  as 
tounded;  "I  don't  see  how  you  could  keep  one  there." 

"I  meant  figuratively." 

11  Oh,  figuratively!" 

"  We're  all  the  time  marching  around  in  front  of  England, 
and  suspecting  her  of  all  kinds  of  low,  underhand  tricks, 
and  the  English  are  constantly  doing  very  noble  and  manly 
things  —  like  suppressing  the  slave-trade,  for  instance." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so,"  assented  the  lady,  rather  tepidly; 
"at  least  that's  the  way  John  talks  —  but  John  knows. 
Anyway  the  Oregon  boundary  fuss  is  all  over,  isn't  it? 
That's  what  mixed  me  up  so  about  Texas.  Last  year  every 
body  was  wanting  to  fight  England  about  Oregon.  And 
when  it  was  settled,  and  they  had  signed  all  the  treaties  and 
everything,  I  just  thought,  'Well  there!  We  won't  hear 
anything  more  about  England  for  one  while!'  And  here 
they  began  right  away  about  England  and  Texas  —  no, 
Mexico  —  no,  Texas,  isn't  it  ?  So  confusing  !  John's  not 
going  anyhow.  Now  just  don't  say  anything  for  a  minute, 
will  you,  Mr.  Burke?  I  might  get  interested,  and  lose  my 
place,  you  know,  I  have  to  count  the  stitches  right  here  — 
one  too  many  would  throw  the  pattern  all  out  of  shape." 

I  dare  say  in  hundreds  of  homes  all  over  the  land  during 
that  winter  and  spring  of  '46,  worried  wives,  mothers,  and 
sisters  were  exacting  like  promises  from  their  restless  men 
folk.  That  cloud  no  larger  than  a  man's  hand,  which  has 
done  yeoman's  duty  in  metaphor  for  generations,  had  ap 
peared  upon  our  horizon;  it  was  spreading  daily,  daily  grow 
ing  more  black  and  menacing.  It  had  threatened  since  San 
Jacinto,  since  the  Alamo,  since  Stephen  Austin  and  the  ear 
liest  settlers  first  set  foot  in  Texan  territory.  I  think,  in 
the  very  nature  of  things,  in  human  nature,  it  was  impossible 
to  avert  this  struggle;  the  Democratic  triumph  at  the  polls 
in  the  last  election  proved  —  if  it  proved  nothing  else  — 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR         313 

the  popularity  of  annexation  measures,  with  war  or  without 
it.  The  opposite  party  did  not  hesitate  to  heap  obloquy 
upon  the  heads  of  the  President  and  his  advisers,  to  warn, 
rebuke,  solemnly  and  righteously  condemn;  but  if  Polk  and 
the  rest  had  been  the  apostles  of  peace  and  Quakerism,  I  do 
not  see  how  they  could  have  refused  the  war.  It  is  idle  to 
compare  notes  as  to  which  nation  began  it,  or  whose  was  the 
just  quarrel;  you  may  labor  through  a  dozen  histories,  and 
end  with  the  conviction  expressed  in  that  sound  and  homely 
old  saying  that  the  Pot  called  the  Kettle  black.  When  it 
came  to  the  point,  which  of  us  cared  a  jot  for  the  blackness 
of  either  the  Pot  or  the  Kettle  ?  The  lust  of  fighting  had  been 
born  in  us  and  strengthened  apace  ;f  Nat  Burke,  with  all  his 
talk  about  moderation  and  justice  and  common  sense,  was, 
at  the  long  last,  just  as  eager  for  the  bloody,  hellish,  foolish 
business  of  war  as  the  most  rabid  Democrat  of  them  all,  just 
as  indifferent  to  reason,  just  as  impatient  of  argument  or 
compromise.  The  country  was  full  of  high-spirited,  adven 
turous,  cock-sure  boys  ready  to  rush  into  the  lists  the  moment 
the  trumpet  should  sound.  I  remember  that  the  whole 
previous  summer,  before  Congress  passed  the  Joint  Resolu 
tion  and  Texas  entered  the  Union,  before  Taylor  was  ordered 
to  the  Border,  before  General  Almonte  asked  the  govern 
ment  at  Washington  for  his  passports  —  before  and  during 
all  these  exciting  events,  but  while  we  were  as  yet  in  an  uncer 
tainty  how  it  all  would  end,  there  was  a  great  increase  of  zeal 
and  enthusiasm  manifest  amongst  all  our  militia  bodies.  There 
was  more  marching  and  drilling,  more  study  of  the  manual 
of  tactics  and  military  manoeuvres  (Cooper's,  recommended 
by  the  general-in-chief  of  the  United  States  Army),  more 
serious  play  at  soldiering.  Had  not  George  Ducey  joined? 
Mr.  Burke  joined,  too,  to  the  infinite  amusement  of  his  Demo 
cratic  friends.  "What,  thou  too,  Brutus!"  said  Sharpless, 
in  tragic  accents,  coming  home  and  finding  Nat's  beautiful 
new  regimentals  spread  out  on  the  bed,  and  this  good,  peace- 
loving  Whig  contemplating  them  fondly;  "then,  Caesar, 
fall !"  said  Jim  —  and  did  fall  upon  his  own  bed  in  spasms 
of  whole-souled  laughter.  Nat  grinned  shamefacedly  ;  he 
had  just  been  elected  captain  of  his  company. 

Somewhat  to  the  disappointment,  I  will  not  say  of  Mr. 
Burke,  but  of  the  fire-eaters  who  were  clamoring  for  battle, 


314  NATHAN   BURKE 

there  succeeded  a  sort  of  lull.  To  be  sure,  the  President's 
message  contained  some  carefully  worded  intimations  of 
trouble  existing ;  but  relations  had  not  yet  been  broken  off. 
The  internal  affairs  of  our  unfortunate  neighbor  were  in  vio 
lent  disorder  and  approaching  a  crisis ;  much  was  to  be 
expected  from  the  exertions  of  that  eminent  diplomatist,  Mr. 
John  Slidell  —  of  whom,  strange  to  say,  none  of  us  had  ever 
heard  before  —  who  was  upon  the  point  of  departure  to  open 
negotiations  with  the  Mexican  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
Seilor  de  la  Pena  y  Pena.  Everything  might  yet  be  well. 
"As  for  war  with  Mexico  on  our  part,  it  is  out  of  the  ques 
tion,"  said  the  Journal,  editorially.  "It  would  be  coward 
ice  to  strike  a  blow  upon  so  weak  and  divided  a  foe,  and  folly 
in  the  extreme  to  resort  to  arms  when  a  let-alone  policy 
would  accomplish  all  that  ultra  southern  politicians  may 
desire.  ...  A  few  weeks,  perhaps  a  few  days,  will  tell 
us  what  will  be  the  end  of  this  Mexican  business." 

Oh,  wise  editor,  man  of  much  foresight,  the  end  was  already 
begun!  As  you  sat  at  your  ink-blurred  table,  turning  off 
copy  with  the  boy  waiting  at  your  elbow,  as  you  shoved  the 
wet  sheets  towards  him,  and  got  up  and  put  off  your  mangy 
old  office-coat,  white  at  all  the  seams  and  much  rubbed  along 
the  right  sleeve,  and  horrid  with  paste  and  ink-stains,  Santa 
Anna,  released  from  prison  and  exile,  may  have  been  landing. 
As  you  assumed  your  respectable  street  garments,  and 
trudged  home  to  Betsy  and  the  children  and  the  Irish  stew 
for  dinner,  the  guns  of  a  revolution  were  roaring,  and  Herrera 
was  in  full  flight,  and  Paredes  reigned  in  his  stead  —  and 
where  was  Pena  y  Pena?  Where  that  eminent  diplomatist 
and  dove  of  peace,  Mr.  John  Slidell  ?  He  had  arrived  in 
Puebla  on  the  eve  of  the  dissolution ;  three  times  he  presented 
his  credentials,  and  was  finally  officially  informed  that  the 
Mexican  Government  (that  stable  institution!)  "could  not 
admit  him  to  the  exercise  of  the  functions  conferred  on  him 
by  the  Government  of  the  United  States."  With  this  Peri  a 
y  Pena  disappears,  and  history  reveals  his  name  no  more. 
Herrera's  administration  was  overthrown;  in  January, 
Paredes,  a  military  chief,  was  ushered  by  the  troops  into  the 
capital  of  Mexico,  and  a  temporary  government  was  formed 
with  General  Almonte,  late  minister  to  the  United  States,  at 
its  head  —  or  among  its  heads.  Mr.  Slidell  retreated  to 


CONTAINS   BOTH   PEACE   AND   WAR          315 

Jalapa,  whence  he  again  attempted  to  obtain  a  hearing, 
and  again  received  an  unequivocal  denial,  this  time  from 
the  new  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Senor  Costillo  y  Lanzas. 
On  March  8,  1846,  the  advance  column  of  the  United  States 
troops  under  Colonel  Twiggs  (the  Second  Regiment  Dra 
goons)  was  in  motion  from  Corpus  Christi  towards  the  Rio 
Grande;  on  the  18th  the  army  reached  the  Arroyo  Colorado; 
on  the  21st  Senor  Costillo  y  Lanzas  enclosed  to  Mr.  Slidell 
his  passports  from  the  Mexican  territories;  on  the  28th 
General  Taylor  mounted  his  batteries  before  Matamoros. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
THE  GIRL  I  LEFT  BEHIND  ME 

IT  took  all  this  stirring  news  much  longer  to  reach  us  than 
would  appear  from  the  summary;  the  editor  of  the  Journal 
and  scores  of  other  editors  had  plenty  of  time  for  their  placid 
prophesying.  News  from  Texas  was  in  the  neighborhood 
of  three  weeks  upon  the  road  to  us  in  the  more  distant  States ; 
and  it  was  received  with  surprise,  perhaps  with  a  lurking 
dismay,  in  spite  of  the  months,  even  years,  of  uneasiness  and 
violence,  of  protest  and  recrimination  and  popular  outcry, 
that  had  preceded  it.  We  found  it  hard  to  credit.  The 
mind  involuntarily  pictures  a  country  upon  the  eve  of  war 
distracted  with  excitement,  salvos  firing,  flags  flaunting, 
churches  crowded  with  weeping  petitioners,  artillery  rattling 
through  the  streets,  clamor  of  men  and  clangor  of  trumpets. 
Instead  of  all  that  here  we  were  peacefully  going  about  our 
business,  reading  the  paper  with  a  more  lively  interest  per 
haps,  but -tranquilly  predicting  that  there  would  be  no  war 
almost  up  to  the  very  last  moment.  In  all  our  lives,  young 
and  old,  none  of  us  could  remember  the  time  when  any 
body  could  say  with  certainty  what  might  be  happening  in 
the  huge,  dim,  vacant  West,  so  remote  it  was,  unknown, 
unconquered,  sprinkled  with  dots  like  Sahara  in  our  maps 
and  called  the  Great  American  Desert;  there  was  always 
fighting  there  or  somewhere;  it  was  natural,  whether  with 
Indians  or  Mexicans;  but  war  with  ranked  troops  and  cannon 
bellowing  across  the  hills  we  were  slow  to  accept.  That 
spring  the  Scioto  rose  in  its  annual  freshet,  and  swept  away 
the  rail-fences  on  its  banks,  and  drowned  a  hog  or  two,  and 
invaded  the  Bottoms;  the  red  buds  touched  the  gray  woods 
with  color;  the  orchards  bloomed  prettily;  Mrs.  Ducey 
gave  Francie  a  party  on  her  birthday  and  the  house 
was  wreathed  with  dogwood  blossoms;  Mr.  James  Sharp- 
less  was  drawn  on  the  grand  jury,  and  served  much  against 
his  will,  but  lacking  a  potent  excuse;  Mr.  Nathan  Burke 

316 


THE   GIRL  I   LEFT   BEHIND  ME  317 

argued  a  case  before  the  Court-in-Bank,  and  won  it;  and 
the  Journal  "  learned  from  the  St.  Louis  Republican  that 
the  following  companies  and  officers  of  the  16th  Regmt. 
U.  S.  Infantry  were  under  marching  orders  for  Texas  and 
would  leave  as  soon  as  possible:  Lt.  Col.  Wilson,  command 
ing  Company  K,  Bt.  Major  Abercrombie,  etc." 

It  may  even  very  well  be  that  the  echoes  of  Resaca  de  la 
Palma  had  hardly  died  away,  and  the  pursuit  was  still  roll 
ing  backward  to  the  Rio  Grande,  while  Mr.  Burke  sat  and 
listened  to  "The  Battle  of  Prague,"  a  pleasant  evening  in 
May,  with  the  scent  of  the  lilacs  coming  in  at  the  windows 
of  the  little  parlor.  Mary's  light  dress  made  a  soft  bright 
blur  by  the  piano  ;  she  had  lilac  ribbons  to  match  —  a  spray 
of  the  fresh  flowers  in  her  black  hair  —  ladies  wore  them  in 
those  days. 

"You  are  so  fond  of  martial  music,  aren't  you1,  Mr.  Burke  ?" 

"I  don't  know  much  about  any  kind  of  music,  you  know," 
said  the  gentleman,  with  a  laugh;  "Jim  and  the  doctor  make 
fun  of  me.  But  I  like  to  hear  you  play  anything  —  you 
know  that." 

"I  heard  Dr.  Vardaman  was  going  to  build  a  house  for 
himself  on  that  place  he  bought  out  by  Governor  Gwynne's, 
after  all,"  Mary  said,  arranging  the  music.  "Do  you  sup 
pose  he  means  to  get  married  ?  Have  you  any  idea  who  it 
is?" 

"Married?  Jack?  Oh,  that's  a  mistake  —  I  don't  think 
he  has  the  least  notion  of  such  a  thing.  He  has  been  talking 
about  building.  He  says  he  means  to  have  a  regular  man's 
house  —  he  jokes  a  good  deal  about  it,  and  Miss  Clara  is  in 
quite  a  state  for  fear  he  won't  let  her  have  any  closets." 

"So  you  think  it's  nothing  but  gossip  ?  I'm  very  sorry.  I 
hoped  it  was  true.  He'd  be  so  much  happier  with  a  wife, 
don't  you  think  so?  People  said  he'd  been  attentive  to 
Jennie  Hunter  —  but  she's  engaged  to  Horace  Gwynne  now. 
Jennie  would  have  made  a  lovely  doctor's  wife.  I'm  so 
sorry.  Shall  I  play  something  else,  Mr.  Burke?  Here's 
Handel  —  '  Rinaldo  '  -  -  '  I'll  make  war,  and  my  foes  I'll 
conquer!'  You  ought  to  like  that.  I  believe  you'd  go 
and  fight  in  Mexico,  if  you  had  the  chance.  You  wouldn't 
care  how  people  felt  about  —  about  seeing  you  go." 


318  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Why,  yes,  I'd  go  —  I'm  just  the  kind  that  ought  to  go," 
said  Nat,  honestly;  "there  isn't  anybody  depending  on  me, 
or  worrying  about  me,  you  know.  My  going  wouldn't  make 
any  difference  to  a  soul  on  earth.  Men  without  ties  are  the 
very  ones  that  ought  to  enlist." 

"I  —  I  don't  think  you  ought  to  talk  that  way  —  it's  not 
true  —  and  it's  not  kind  to  —  to  your  friends,"  said  Mary,  in 
a  low  voice.  She  looked  at  him,  and  away  again  hastily. 
Were  there  tears  in  her  eyes  ?  The  next  moment  she  began 
to  finger  the  piano-keys  in  those  little  preparatory  runs  and 
trills  that  most  players  affect.  "I'll  play  the  '  Rinaldo.' 
Wouldn't  you  like  to  hear  it  ?  Will  you  turn,  please  ?" 

He  got  up  and  turned  obediently;  that  is,  he  turned  one 
leaf;  and  then,  standing  over  her,  and  looking  down  at  her 
face  with  the  fair,  almost  pallid  complexion,  and  features  a 
little  delicately  sharpened  this  last  year  or  so,  forgot  every 
thing  else  until  the  abrupt  cessation  of  the  music  made  him 
start. 

"What  are  you  doing,  idle  man?"  said  Mary,  lifting  her 
gray  eyes  at  him  with  an  archly  severe  expression.  "Why 
don't  you  turn  ?  If  you  were  one  of  my  pupils,  I  would  rap 
your  knuckles.  What  are  you  thinking  of  ?" 

"I  was  thinking  of  you,"  said  Nat. 

She  started  up,  her  white  skirts  and  ribbons  rustling  and 
fluttering,  her  eyes  very  wide  and  dark  as  they  rested  on  the 
young  man's  face  where,  perhaps,  she  saw  some  unwonted 
or  telltale  expression;  and  put  out  one  of  her  hands  almost 
appealingly.  But  Burke  took  it  in  his  own,  and  held  it 
close. 

"Mary— "he 


And  I  think  the  gray-haired  individual  who  writes  this 
history  will  spare  himself  and  everybody  else  a  recital  of 
what  followecl.  He  must  be  a  strange  sort  of  man  who 
relishes  witnessing  another  man's  love-making.  I  have 
beheld  upon  the  stage  a  thousand  scenes  of  men  and  women 
sighing  and  vowing  and  kissing  and  protesting  —  I  have 
waded  through  countless  novels  where  the  sentimentalizing 
monopolized  two-thirds  of  one's  time  —  and  I  swear  I  never 
did  either  without  a  profound  embarrassment.  I  shrank 
guiltily  from  spying  upon  their  confidences;  I  felt  as  if  I 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT    BEHIND   ME  319 

were  listening  and  peeping  at  the  keyhole.  Are  these  things 
to  be  watched  and  exploited  ?  We  had  better  beware  of  med 
dling  with  all  this  sweet  foolishness,  else  we  shall  destroy  the 
sweetness  and  have  nothing  left  but  the  folly.  My  grandson 
would  no  more  care  to  read  the  tale  of  his  grandfather's 
sweethearting  than  he  would  enjoy  having  the  old  gentle 
man  pop  in  upon  him  and  his  Phyllis  or  Chloe  at  an  interest 
ing  moment  —  from  which  maladroit  action,  Heaven  defend 
us  both!  All  that  he  needs  or  wants  to  know  is  that  Mr. 
Burke  went  home  along  the  star-lit  streets,  a  little  later  than 
was  his  habit,  very  happy  after  his  quiet  fashion.  He  was 
too  happy,  in  fact,  to  go  to  bed  at  once,  and  sat  down  to 
await  the  arrival  of  her  brother  Jim,  in  an  arm-chair  looking 
out  upon  the  roofs  and  chimney-pots  and  stars.  It  was  not  a 
poetic  vista,  but  Burke's  thoughts  were  elsewhere;  and  no  one 
knows  what  pictures  of  a  home,  a  family,  a  long,  bright,  endless 
future  Mrs.  Slaney's  shabby  casement  framed  for  him.  He  was 
still  sitting  thus  when  the  city  clocks  struck  twelve,  and  he 
heard  at  last  Jim's  foot  on  the  stair;  he  came  running  up 
boyishly,  two  steps  at  a  time,  and  whirled  into  the  room. 
The  walls  shook  as  he  banged  the  door,  the  flame  of  the  lamp 
leaped  upon  the  wick. 

11  Nat,  have  you  heard  it?  Have  you  heard  the  news? 
No  —  I  forgot!  Of  course  you  can't  have  heard.  The 
letters  just  came  into  the  office  —  I  left  'em  working  like 
beavers  at  an  extra  — 

" Heard  what?  What  under  the  sun  has  happened?" 
Burke  asked,  wondering. 

"Why,  it's  come!  War,  I  mean,  war,  Nathan  B.,  war! 
We  might  have  known  we  couldn't  get  out  of  it.  Look  here  ! " 
he  snatched  a  roll  of  papers  from  his  pockets  and  spread  them 
crackling  under  the  light.  "  I  scratched  off  a  copy.  It's  from 
the  Galveston  News  —  they've  had  fighting,  Nat.  Not  bush 
whacking  around  in  corners,  you  know,  but  fighting.  Look 
here,  it's  dated  the  thirtieth  of  last  month,  and  this  is  May 
the  what,  do  you  know  ?" 

"The  eleventh  —  it's  the  eleventh,"  said  Nat,  himself 
excited. 

"They'd  had  fighting  down  there  where  Taylor  is  already 
when  this  was  written,  and  they  must  have  had  more  since. 
Read  that :  — 


320  NATHAN   BURKE 

LATEST  NEWS 

MEXICANS   OPEN   HOSTILITIES!!! 

WAR  NOW  INEVITABLE!!!! 

We  learn  that  on  the  24th  inst.  Gen'l  Taylor  ordered  Capt. 
S.  B.  Thornton  of  the  2d  dragoons  with  a  detail  of  61  men 
to  make  a  reconnoissance  at  the  crossing  of  the  river  (Bravo 
del  Norte)  above  Ft.  Brown.  Accompanying  Capt.  Thorn 
ton  were  Capt.  Hardee,  Lieutenants  Mason  and  Kane.  Ac 
cording  to  the  latest  and  most  trustworthy  reports  at  a 
point  about  thirty  miles  above  the  American  camp,  they 
were  surprised  by  a  large  force  of  Mexicans,  and  after  the 
loss  of  16  men  killed  and  wounded,  compelled  to  surrender. 
The  action  took  place  in  a  plantation  surrounded  by  a  thick 
chaparral  fence,  the  enemy  out-numbering  Thornton's 
command  at  least  ten  to  one,  it  is  stated.  Lieutenant 
Mason  fell  mortally  wounded  at  the  first  fire ;  it  has  been 
impossible  so  far  to  obtain  definite  details,  but  it  is  sup 
posed  that  about  ten  or  a  dozen  escaped,  the  Mexicans  tak 
ing  twenty-five  or  more  prisoners,  among  them  Thornton 
and  Kane.  We  hope  to  publish  a  list  of  the  killed, 
wounded,  and  missing  within  a  few  days.  .  .  . 

It  had  come,  sure  enough.  "  There's  an  end  of  all  the  blow 
ing  and  coat-tail-dragging,  and  face-making,  and  you're-an- 
other-ing,"  said  Jim;  "only  think,  they  may  be  hard  at  it, 
hammer-and-tongs  this  minute  !" 

"Shouldn't  wonder.  We  ought  to  get  a  map,  and  find 
out  where  some  of  these  places  are,"  Burke  said,  studying 
the  papers;  "Bravo  del  Norte  is  just  another  name  for  the 
Rio  Grande,  I  guess.  But  what  on  earth  is  chaparral,  do 
you  suppose?" 

"Some  kind  of  a  thorny  plant,  cactus  or  something,  1 
think.  Are  you  going  Nat  ?  If  they  call  for  volunteers,  I 
mean?  You've  always  said  you'd  go." 

Burke  started.  Was  he  going  ?  Why,  yes,  of  course  — 
and  yet  —  he  hesitated,  looking  at  his  friend  shyly,  almost 
timidly.  "Yes,  I'll  go  —  at  least  I  ought  to  go,  only  —  it's 
a  little  different  now,"  he  said,  and  swallowed  uneasily,  red 
dening. 

"Hey,  different?" 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT   BEHIND   ME  321 

"I  —  I  was  going  to  tell  you  some  —  some  news,  too,  Jim, 
only  I  —  you  began  first  with  this  —  I  — 

"What  is  it?"  said  Jim,  unsuspectingly.  He  had  drawn 
a  chair  to  the  table  and  was  leaning  over  the  despatches, 
with  his  head  propped  between  his  hands.  "What  did  you 
say,  Nat?" 

"  I'm  going  to  — to  be  married." 

Sharpless  looked  up  abruptly;  their  eyes  met  in  a  brief 
silence.  "Married?" 

"Not  at  once,  of  course,  I  don't  mean  that  —  I  —  I'm  not 
making  quite  enough  for  that  yet,  but  I  will  in  a  year  or  so, 
I  guess.  I'm  engaged,  though,"  said  Nat,  blushing  with  a 
silly  delight  in  the  statement.  "Can't  you  guess  who  it  is  ?" 

Jim's  face  paled  strangely;  he  rose,  leaning  his  weight  on 
the  table,  braced  upon  his  hands.  The  motion  was  like  that 
of  an  old  man;  he  cleared  his  throat.  "I  —  I  —  it's  Miss 
Blake,  I  suppose,  Nat  —  of  course,  it's  Miss  Blake." 

"Francie?"  said  Burke,  in  surprise  and  a  faint  disappoint 
ment;  "why,  no — what  made  you  think  of  her?  It's  — 
I  don't  know  why  you  don't  know,  Jim  —  I've  never  looked 
at  any  other  girl  —  to  be  sure  I  never  spoke  of  it  to  you, 
but  I — I  couldn't  somehow — it's  your  sister  —  it's  Mary." 

There  was  another  flat  and  somehow  disconcerting  silence. 
"Mar?//"  repeated  Jim,  vacantly;  "my  sister  Mary?" 

"Yes.  Why  do  you  look  so?"  said  Nat,  hurt.  He 
scarcely  knew  what  he  had  expected,  but  certainly  not  this. 
"Haven't  you  got  anything  to  say  to  me,  Jim?  Aren't 
you  —  don't  you  like  it  ?  Aren't  you  a  little  glad  ?" 

The  other's  face  flushed  all  over;  the  tears  came  into  his 
eyes.  He  kicked  the  chair  noisily  away  from  him  and  ran 
up  to  Burke  and  grasped  his  two  hands.  "Why,  Nat,  glad! 
Of  course  I'm  glad.  I  was  only  taken  aback  for  a  minute. 
I'm  such  a  dunce  I  never  noticed  it  —  never  noticed  anything, 
you  know.  But  glad !  Still,  I  couldn't  care  more  for  you 
even  if  you  were  my  brother  twice  over,  Nat,  you  know 
that!" 

And  the  next  day,  Burke  had  his  second  interview  with  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless,  which  passed  off  not  ill;  and  with 
Mrs.  Sharpless,  who  was  very  kind,  and  called  him  her  dear 
boy  in  a  rather  trembling  voice,  reaching  up  to  pat  his 
shoulder,  being  on  the  whole,  as  the  young  man  remarked 


322  NATHAN   BURKE 

inwardly  with  some  perplexity,  in  an  inexplicable  way,  more 
sweet  and  tender  with  him  than  Mary  herself.  The  news  of 
the  engagement  being  spread  abroad,  various  others  came 
and  shook  hands  with  him  impressively;  and  Jack  Vardaman 
congratulated  him  heartily  in  a  tone  that  left  no  possible 
doubt  of  his  sincerity  and  disinterestedness;  but,  after  all, 
there  was  comparatively  little  notice  taken  of  the  event,  for, 
at  the  time,  Nat's  world  had  something  else  upon  its  mind. 
However  ignorant  we  may  have  been  of  the  Mexican 
country  and  people  when  the  news  of  Thornton's  brush 
with  the  enemy  reached  us,  there  was  no  dearth  "of  infor 
mation  and  statistics  afterwards.  Maps  were  as  plentiful  as 
blackberries  in  August;  they  were  published  in  every  paper, 
sold  in  every  shop,  carried  in  every  pocket;  almost  any 
body  could  tell  you  offhand  the  exact  location  of  Point 
Isabel  (where  our  troops  would  probably  be  landed,  in  case 
— ?);  of  Matamoros  (twenty-seven  miles  southwest  from 
Point  Isabel);  of  Corpus  Christi,  whence  the  army  had 
marched.  George  Ducey  was  especially  strong  on  these 
figures  and  calculations,  and  knew  precisely  what  General 
Taylor's  next  move  ought  to  be.  The  New  Orleans  Picayune 
came  out  with  a  list,  "  which  might  be  valuable  for  reference," 
of  the  area  and  population  of  all  the  states  comprised  in  the 
Estados  Unidos  Mexicanos;  it  was  widely  copied,  and  the 
figures  might  have  been  alarming,  if  any  of  us  had  stopped  to 
consider  them;  but  we  struggled  awhile  with  the  unfamiliar 
syllables  -  -  Guanaxuato  —  Coahuila  —  Tamaulipas  —  and 
cast  them  aside  in  impatience  and  contempt.  All  that  we 
cared  about  was  news  direct  and  hot  from  the  scene  itself; 
there  had  been  more  fighting,  there  must  have  been  more 
fighting,  and  how  had  we  fared  ?  We  believed  in  our  hearts 
that  one  American  was  equal  to  half  a  dozen  Mexicans; 
nevertheless  Taylor  had  only  four  thousand  men  —  no,  only 
twenty-five  hundred  —  no  —  well,  whatever  it  was,  he  had 
only  a  handful,  whereas  General  Arista  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Rio  Grande  might  draw  on  those  entire  Estados  Unidos 
Mexicanos  which  lay,  in  a  manner  of  speaking,  at  his  elbow. 
We  might  have  been  in  some  uncertainty  and  apprehension, 
but  that  spirit  surely  inherited,  however  remotely  and  how 
ever  diluted,  from  the  Anglo-Saxon,  that  serene,  confident, 
sanguine  spirit  of  the  dominant  race,  upheld  us.  It  was  in- 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT   BEHIND   ME  323 

conceivable  that  a  parcel  of  half-breed  Spanish,  Mexicans, 
Indians,  what-not  (thus  we  scornfully  imagined  them),  with 
a  general  whom  probably  not  one-third  of  them  would  obey, 
could  beat  and  keep  on  beating  United  States  soldiers  under 
a  man  like  old  Zack  Taylor,  a  seasoned  officer,  a  veteran  of 
1812,  the  hero  of  a  score  of  fights  from  Fort  Harrison  to  the 
Everglades.  "I  do  not  feel  much  anxiety  about  Gen'l 
Taylor's  position,"  wrote  old  General  Felix  Huston,  from 
Port  Huron;  "I  think  he  will  lose  more  horses  than  men. 
I  cannot  think,  with  good  generalship,  the  Mexicans  can 
defeat  him.  I  have  not  the  highest  opinion  of  the  material 
of  his  army,  but  I  will  gamble  on  it  they  do  not  whip  him. 
.  .  .  The  fact  is,  an  American  volunteer  army,  composed 
of  clerks  and  loafers,  mechanics  and  fiddlers,  farmers  and 
flatboat-men,  backwoodsmen  and  city  dandies,  can  fight  any 
people  on  any  ground;  and  from  Daniel  Boone  down  to  the 
present  time,  they  have  beat  Indians  and  Mexicans  in  all 
kinds  of  brush  and  logs,  ' everglades'  and  ' chaparrals.' 
.  .  .  Those  d — d  ' chaparrals'  stick  in  my  craw.  As 
soon  as  I  heard  the  regular  army  officers  talking  about 
'chaparrals,'  I  thought,  charge  Uncle  Sam  with  $40,000 
for  '  chaparrals '!  It  puts  me  in  mind  of  everglades  and 
hummocks.  Every  place  where  300  baggage-wagons  can 
not  get  along  has  some  d — d  hard  name." 

This  stout  old  warrior,  sitting  down  to  give  vent  to  the 
above  opinions  with  his  unaccustomed  pen,  offers  to  Burke's 
mind  a  singularly  humorous,  spirited,  and  agreeable  picture; 
and  his  letter  somehow  puts  before  one  more  vividly  than 
any  words  of  this  historian  the  temper  of  our  time.  Beat 
them  ?  Of  course  we  should  beat  them  !  We  could  beat  them 
with  one  hand  tied  behind  us  !  But,  in  the  meanwhile,  what 
was  happening  ?  In  a  day  or  two,  Taylor's  letter,  written 
three  or  four  weeks  back,  calling  on  the  governor  of  Louisi 
ana  for  troops,  was  published;  so  that  there  could  hardly 
be  a  doubt  that  some  of  the  clerks,  loafers,  backwoodsmen, 
and  dandies  had  had  a  chance  to  display  their  prowess  before 
this.  The  general  recommended  General  P.  F.  Smith  to 
command  these  gentry;  he  subjoined  a  plan  for  the  organiza 
tion  of  the  volunteer  regiments.  Fellow-citizens  !  To  arms  ! 
"Texans,  you  have  at  last  an  opportunity  of  retaliating  on 
these  perfidious  Mexicans  the  many  injuries  they  have  done 


324  NATHAN   BURKE 

you  — !"  There  was  renewed  and  very  great  activity 
amongst  our  militia  bodies.  The  Montgomery  Guards,  the 
German  military  companies,  drilled  feverishly;  Captain 
Burke's  command  made  brilliant  progress;  Lieutenant 
Ducey  stalked  around  breathing  out  fire  and  slaughter. 
I  should  not  have  liked  to  be  the  Mexican  to  come  within 
reach  of  George's  doughty  arm;  he  would  have  had  to  get 
briskly  about  his  heathenish  Mexican  prayers.  It  was  a 
Monday  morning  that  Mr.  Burke,  not  having  seen  the  paper 
as  yet,  was  stepping  along  towards  his  office  when  at  the 
corner  of  State  and  High  streets  he  encountered  a  crowd 
so  numerous  and  unusual  for  that  comparatively  early 
hour  that  he  paused  to  reconnoitre  it  —  reconnoitre  being 
the  word  that  sprang  spontaneously  before  his  mind  and 
made  him  smile.  "  We're  getting  very  military,"  he  thought, 
and  pushed  up  to  a  place  whence  he  could  see  that  the  cause 
of  detention  was  not  two  men  fighting  or  one  man  having  a 
fit,  but  a  bill  already  posted  high  up.  The  artist  who  had  ac 
complished  this  work  was  departing  with  his  ladder  and  paste- 
pail  and  brushes,  and  a  roll  of  similar  bills  under  his  arm. 
"  Going  to  enlist,  Sam  ?"  some  one  sung  out,  waving  an  arm 
at  an  acquaintance  over  the  hats  and  shoulders.  "  You  bet ! " 
Burke  raised  on  tiptoe  and  craned  his  neck  to  read:  — 

"Whereas,  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  by  virtue  of 
the  Constitutional  Authority  vested  in  them  have  declared 
.  .  .  that  by  the  act  of  the  Republic  of  Mexico,  a  state  of 
war  exists  between  that  government  and  the  United  States. 
Now,  therefore,  I,  James  K.  Polk,  President  of  the  United 
States,  do  hereby  proclaim  the  same  .  .  .  enjoin  all  persons 
holding  civil  or  military  authority  ...  to  be  vigilant  and 
zealous  ..." 

Burke  walked  away  meditatively,  and  found  the  Journal 
at  his  door  with  a  wailing  editorial  on  the  general  war  in  which 
the  President  had  unwarrantably  involved  the  country. 
"But  the  mischief  is  done  now.  Let  nothing  prevent  the 
Whigs  from  doing  their  whole  duty  in  the  defence  of  the 
country  —  it  is  enough  that  our  flag  is  in  danger  —  '  the 
article  continued  in  that  mood  of  pious  resignation  which  a 
paper  of  good  Whig  principles  must  adopt  —  and  blithely 
went  to  discussing  the  probable  size  of  Ohio's  quota  of  troops 
in  the  next  column  !  In  another  day  we  had  news  of  the  bom- 


THE  GIRL  I   LEFT   BEHIND  ME  325 

bardment  and  fall  of  Matamoros,  and  of  the  victories  of  Palo 
Alto  and  Resaca;  and  Governor  Bartley  issued  his  call  for 
volunteers. 

Nat  Burke  was  one  of  the  first  to  respond  to  that  invita 
tion.  The  young  man  was  not  by  nature  impulsive;  he 
had  his  reckless  and  visionary  moments,  but  a  sober  second 
thought  generally  corrected  them.  And  when  he  went  and 
enrolled  himself  and  took  the  oath  before  the  United  States 
Army  officers  who  were  in  charge  of  the  enlistments,  it  was 
with  no  brilliant  images  of  glory  and  valor  and  renown; 
he  thought  he  was  performing  a  natural,  proper,  and  dutiful 
act,  for  the  simple  reasons  he  had  given  his  betrothed.  It 
was  no  surrender  of  his  legal  career,  which  he  meant  to  resume 
upon  his  return.  And  if  he  did  not  return  —  but  you  and 
I  know  that  it  is  always  the  other  fellow  who  is  going  to  be 
killed.  I  do  not  remember  that  Burke  ever  gave  any  more 
consideration  to  that  possibility  during  his  military  expe 
rience  than  he  did  at  any  other  time  of  his  life.  Who,  aside 
from  misanthropes  and  hypochondriacs,  ever  deliberately 
sits  down  to  contemplate  his  death  and  fading  hours  ?  Why, 
nobody,  not  even  those  warily  devout  people  who  are  forever 
preaching  these  things  at  us !  Mr.  Burke  made  arrange 
ments  with  his  friend  Lewis  to  take  over  his  business  and 
went  about  his  preparations  with  a  kind  of  placid  zest. 
For  one  instant,  as  we  have  seen,  he  hesitated,  thinking  of 
Mary,  but  it  was  only  for  an  instant.  And,  to  tell  the  truth, 
the  young  lady  herself  received  the  announcement  of  his 
resolution  with  comparative  calm  —  which,  inconsistently 
enough,  Burke  a  little  resented.  If  Mary  had  burst  into  tears 
and  flung  herself  into  his  arms,  he  would  have  felt  a  little 
foolish,  yet  still  been  obscurely  pleased.  The  most  modest 
and  least  self-assertive  of  men  likes  to  be  a  hero  to  his  women- 
kind —  yes,  even  when  he  laughs  at  their  absurd  unwar 
ranted  admiration,  he  is  secretly  tickled.  But  Mary  gave 
way  to  no  such  hysterical  demonstrations;  Burke  was 
struck,  as  he  had  been  once  or  twice  before  in  his  life,  with 
the  extraordinary  difference  in  women,  whom  we  serenely 
assume  to  be  all  of  one  pattern.  Little  Francie  Blake  had 
hung  on  his  neck  with  wild  tears  when  he  was  only  going  away 
a  step.  Of  course  she  was  nothing  but  a  child,  and  she  would 
not  do  such  a  thing  now;  but  she  might  exhibit  quite  as  much 


326  NATHAN   BURKE 

emotion  over  his  departure  as  the  girl  he  was  engaged  to, 
without  indecorum.  Mary  was  almost  as  much  elated  and 
excited  as  the  young  fellows  who  were  enlisting  right  and  left 
in  these  few  weeks. 

"I  wish  I  could  go,  too  —  if  I  were  a  man,  I  would  go," 
she  said  with  brilliant  eyes.  "I  believe  I'll  cut  off  my  hair 
and  go  as  —  as  a  First  Musician.  I  could  get  that  position 
I  know  —  couldn't  I  ?  They're  paid  fifteen  dollars  a  month 
- 1  saw  it  in  the  paper  —  two  of  'em  to  every  regiment. 
I'll  enlist  with  yours,  Nathan.  The  musicians  wear  red 
coats  with  white  linings  and  turnbacks,  and  a  white  worsted 
plume  in  their  caps.  Don't  you  think  that  would  be  becom 
ing  to  me,  sir  ?  Don't  you  think  I'd  make  a  fine  figure  of  a 
soldier  ?  "  She  paraded  up  and  down  the  room  with  an  erect 
and  martial  carriage,  blowing  on  an  imaginary  trumpet,  and 
casting  provoking  side-glances  at  him,  until  Burke  caught 
and  kissed  her  on  her  pretty  mouth  conveniently  puckered 
for  the  trumpet-blowing.  The  young  gentleman  had  gone 
a  good  way  from  his  original  post  of  tremulous  suppliant, 
it  will  be  observed.  I  do  not  think  Mary  encouraged  him; 
she  submitted  to  his  caresses  without  any  vulgar  scuffling, 
yet  without  returning  them.  And  if  Burke  felt  vaguely 
that  a  little  more  warmth  in  her  smile  or  eyes  would  have 
somehow  seemed  more  natural  or  gratifying,  he  yet  admired 
her  very  coolness  and  self-command.  He  liked  her  the  better 
for  it,  he  told  himself;  and,  at  any  rate,  he  was  the  only 
man  she  had  ever  cared  for  —  she  said  so.  And  no  one  had 
ever  kissed  her  before  —  no  ! 

The  declaration  of  war  and  subsequent  action  of  Congress 
in  voting  men  and  means  occasioned  no  flurry  on  the  New 
York  Stock  Exchange  —  so  Burke  heard  from  old  Mr.  Marsh 
—  yet  the  excitement  all  over  the  country  was  now  blazing 
high.  All  kinds  of  rumors  spread  from  the  seat  of  war. 
Arista  was  retreating  with  his  forces  cut  to  pieces;  Arista 
was  a  prisoner,  with  General  La  Vega  and  their  families, 
and  they  were  already  on  their  way  to  New  Orleans;  Santa 
Anna  had  been  put  in  command  and  was  advancing  ;  Taylor 
was  fortified  at  Matamoros;  Taylor  had  gone  to  Saltillo 
with  the  army.  Private  letters  from  officers  who  had  been 
in  the  fight  at  Palo  Alto  began  to  pour  in;  Burke  heard 
many  such  read  aloud  by  somebody  standing  on  a  chair 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT   BEHIND   ME  327 

above  the  crowd  in  the  bar-room,  or  coffee-house.  ".  .  . 
Their  dinners  were  on  the  fire,  cooking,  and  answered  for 
ours.  ..."  "  .  .  .  Our  battalion  followed  at  a  run  in 
pursuit  six  miles  to  the  ferry.  .  .  ."  "  The  Mexican  muskets 
were  all  marked  George  IV  or  Rex,  Tower  —  " 

"Good  Gracious!"  ejaculates  Nat,  thinking  of  his  own 
respectable  heirloom  hanging  over  the  chimney-piece  at 
Mrs.  Slaney's. 

"Poor  Ringgold  was  buried  to-day  with  all  the  honors  of 
war.  It's  a  dreadful  loss  to  the  service.  The  wound  was  in  the 
groin;  when  he  fell  he  called  out,  '  Never  mind  me,  boys !  Go 
ahead!'  .  .  .  "The  general  behaved  most  gallantly.  In 
the  second  battle  he  was  more  exposed  than  any  one  else; 
and  there  he  sat  part  of  the  time  giving  his  orders  with  his  leg 
cocked  over  the  pommel  of  the  saddle.  ..."  The  reader 
has  to  stop  for  the  cheering.  Hurrah  for  old  Rough-and- 
Ready!  Three  times  three! 

The  enlistments  were  so  heavy  at  all  the  various  points  in 
our  State  that  before  long  it  became  a  matter  of  great  anxiety 
amongst  all  these  brave  lads  as  to  who  was  to  be  allowed  to 
go.  Ohio  was  called  upon  for  only  three  regiments;  and 
though  that  would  amount  to  nearly  three  thousand  men,  it 
was  evident  the  applicants  would  exceed  that  number. 
Somebody  would  have  to  stay  at  home  —  distracting 
thought !  The  war  would  be  over  in  a  few  months,  weeks 
perhaps  —  it  might  be  over  now,  for  that  matter  —  and  the 
one  chance  of  the  century  would  be  lost!  Of  course,  the 
militiaman,  having,  presumably,  already  had  some  prac 
tice  in  drill  and  the  handling  of  weapons,  would  be  preferred 
to  the  detached  youth  with  a  taste  for  adventure  and  no 
experience.  To  be  sure  he  could  enlist  in  the  United  States 
Army  for  the  regular  term  of  years;  but,  generally  speaking, 
he  didn't  want  to  do  that.  If  he  happened  to  be  or  think 
himself  a  gentleman,  he  naturally  would  choose  the  volunteer 
service  and  a  chance  by  some  wire-pulling  to  get  himself 
an  officer's  commission,  rather  than  serve  his  country  as  a 
plain  private.  From  this  arose  dire  worry;  yet  Burke  held 
on  his  way  undisturbed  in  a  certainty  that  it  would  not  fall 
to  his  lot  to  be  among  the  siftings.  The  process,  by  the  way, 
appeared  to  go  neither  by  justice  nor  by  favor  nor  anything 
but  blind  luck.  Two  men  were  desirous  of  working  in  the  field ; 


328  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  one  was  taken  and  the  other  left,  nobody  knew  why, 
least  of  all,  apparently,  those  who  made  the  selection.  The 
German  companies  were  declined  on  account  of  the  inability 
of  the  rank  and  file  to  understand  English  —  a  great  mistake, 
to  Burke's  notion.  They  would  have  learned  soon  enough, 
and  were  the  very  stuff  for  soldiers,  —  sturdy,  patriotic,  and 
with  an  instinctive  appreciation  of  the  value  of  discipline 
and  massed  strength.  Nat  was  not  disappointed;  he  and  his 
company,  and  Captain  Walworth  with  his,  and  the  Mont 
gomery  Guards  in  a  body  were  drafted  into  the  First  Ohio 
very  shortly  after  their  arrival  at  Camp  Washington,  outside 
of  Cincinnati,  where  the  volunteers  from  all  over  the  State  had 
their  rendezvous;  Mitchell  was  their  colonel,  a  West  Point 
man. 

But  before  that  momentous  event  took  place,  we  had  six 
weeks  of  frenzied  preparation.  Nothing  further  appeared 
to  be  happening  on  the  Rio  Grande,  but  the  popular  fever 
did  not  abate.  Biographies  of  Taylor,  of  Scott,  —  who  was 
at  this  time  in  Washington,  doing  a  great  deal  of  talking  and 
writing,  —  of  Kearny  and  Doniphan,  of  Brown,  who  had  so 
gallantly  defended  his  poor  little  fort  (a  successor,  but  vic 
torious,  to  Crockett.  Hurrah!  Remember  the  Alamo!),  of 
Ringgold  and  Thornton,  came  out  at  least  once  a  week  in  the 
papers.  Generals  Wool  and  Worth  passed  through  on  their 
way  to  their  commands.  A  Colonel  Croghan  was  appointed 
inspector-general  of  the  volunteer  troops.  "Croghan? 
That  must  be  'little  GeorgieV  son,"  said  Burke  to  himself. 
There  were  yard-long  lists  of  the  presidential  commissions 
issued  every  day;  exact  and  most  prolix  instructions  as  to 
the  organization  and  equipment  of  the  regiments.  If  we 
were  privates,  we  were  to  get  forty  rounds  of  ammunition 
and  two  flints  apiece  served  out  to  us  at  the  United  States 
Army  depot  at  Baton  Rouge,  when  we  passed  there  on  our  way 
to  New  Orleans  and  the  Gulf.  If  officers,  like  our  friends 
Captain  Burke  and  Lieutenant  Ducey,  we  were  to  wear  a 
dark  blue  cloth  coat  with  two  rows  of  silver  or  plated  buttons 
(minutely  described),  with  a  standing  collar,  a  plain  round 
cuff,  2  loops  4|  inches  long  on  each  side  of  the  collar-opening, 
etc.  We  had  to  have  winter  trousers  of  light-blue  mixture 
cloth  and  summer  ditto  of  white  linen  or  cotton.  A  black 
beaver  cap  1\  inches  high  with  a  patent-leather  band  and 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT   BEHIND   ME  329 

peak  was  prescribed  for  our  heads  ;  we  were  allowed  our 
choice  of  a  black  leather  or  silk  stock,  and  of  ankle  or  ''Jef 
ferson"  style  boots.  George  Ducey  could  have  recited  all 
these  details  in  his  sleep;  if  getting  ready  could  make  a 
soldier  of  a  man,  George  would  have  been  the  best  that  ever 
went  in  shoes  —  ankle  or  Jefferson !  I  am  sure  there  was 
not  in  our  whole  regiment,  State,  or  army  a  better-dressed 
or  more  dashing  volunteer,  or  a  more  ferocious  enemy  of 
Mexico.  He  let  his  mustache  grow,  and  presented  so  fierce 
and  warlike  an  appearance  in  our  streets  that  he  was  notice 
able  even  in  this  excited  time.  Mrs.  Ducey,  without  a 
doubt,  spent  her  days  in  planning  impossible  comforts  for 
his  kit,  and  her  nights  in  weeping  over  the  dark  future.  I 
fear  nobody  else  viewed  George's  departure  with  a  very  keen 
regret;  he  was  not  popular  even  in  that  fashionable  circle 
of  which  he  was  so  distinguished  an  ornament,  and  if  people 
respected  the  spirit  he  displayed  in  enlisting,  they  none  the 
less  wondered  at  it  in  George  Ducey.  It  was  natural  enough 
that  he  should  have  joined  the  militia  and  decked  himself 
with  epaulets  and  flourished  a  sword  in  the  late  piping  times 
of  peace;  but  Burke,  remembering  certain  not  altogether 
heroic  scenes  in  which  George  had  borne  a  leading  part, 
was  privately  a  good  deal  amused  and  scornful.  "  He  thinks 
he'll  come  back  a  brigadier-general  at  the  very  least,"  Nat 
said  to  Sharpless,  laughing;  "it  takes  much  hardtack  and 
cold  bacon  and  sore  feet  and  sleeping  in  the  open  —  to  say 
nothing  of  a  few  other  desirable  qualifications  —  to  make 
a  brigadier-general,  I  guess.  And  somehow  I  don't  see 
George  on  the  march  and  in  the  camp  any  more  than  I  see 
him  on  the  pitched  field  for  that  matter.  But  he's  a  curious 
mixture  —  you  never  can  tell." 

"Huh!"  Jim  grunted.  He  disdained  to  canvass  George's 
prospects;  but  remarked  after  a  moment's  silence:  "You 
talk  like  an  old  stager,  Nat.  Anybody  might  think  you'd 
made  a  dozen  campaigns." 

"I  think  it's  born  in  me,"  Burke  said.  "It's  not  so  much 
that  I  used  to  camp  out  and  follow  the  trail  so  often  with 
Darnell  when  I  was  a  boy,  and  listen  to  his  wild  old  stories  — 
it's  not  that,  though  that  must  have  something  to  do  with  it. 
It's  something  else  —  it's  in  the  blood,  I  think.  There's 
an  old  battered  ex-army-sergeant  —  that  is,  he  says  he  was 


330  NATHAN   BURKE 

a  sergeant  —  in  our  quartermaster's  department  that  1 
watched  for  a  while  the  other  day,  trying  to  show  one  of  the 
men  how  to  pack  a  mule  —  the  man  boggling  along  with 
everything  sliding  all  over,  camp-kettle  one  way,  coffee-mill 
the  other,  in  a  terrible  mess  —  mule  backing  and  sidling  — 
sergeant  swearing  fit  to  raise  your  hair!  I  went  out  and 
roped  the  whole  business  up  tolerably  shipshape  in  a  minute 
or  two.  I  don't  know  that  it  would  have  stayed  very  long 
on  the  march,  but  the  sergeant  was  tremendously  compli 
mentary.  l  You've  seen  service  before,  sir,  I  reckon/  says  he, 
I've  been  used  to  horses  and  harness  since  I  was  a  little  tad, 
you  know  • —  I'm  kind  of  handy  with  'em.  Perhaps  I've  got 
a  long  string  of  barbarous  ancestors,  trappers,  hunters,  rough- 
and-ready  soldiers  —  God  He  knows  who  or  what  they  were. 
If  the  governor  doesn't  take  us,  I'll  enlist  with  some  body  of 
riflemen  in  the  regular  service.  I  shoot  better  with  a  rifle 
than  with  this  pistol  we  have  to  carry.  But  I  think  probably 
we'll  be  taken." 

It  was  a  warm  June  night,  the  night  before  we  marched, 
when  Mr. —  mercy,  I  beg  his  pardon!  —  when  Captain 
Burke  delivered  himself  of  these  beliefs,  sitting  with  his 
friend,  and  smoking  a  last  pipe  together  in  their  room,  one 
on  either  side  of  the  window  with  their  heels  on  the  sill. 
Nat's  portmanteau  had  already  gone  forward  with  the  com 
pany  luggage;  there  on  a  chair  lay  his  uniform  neatly  folded, 
his  sword  stood  in  the  comer.  The  day  before,  gallantly 
arrayed,  he  and  the  seventy-odd  men  of  his  command  had 
marched  out  to  the  Ducey  home;  and  there  before  the 
front  porch,  where  the  customary  summer  crop  of  young 
ladies  bloomed  in  pretty  organdies  and  Swisses,  drawn  up  at 
"  parade  rest, "  with  their  captain  in  the  van,  a  brave  show  of 
blue  coats  and  white  trousers  (linen  or  cotton),  they  had 
received  a  beautiful  flag  embroidered  and  bullion-fringed, 
presented  by  the  Ladies'  Aid  Society  of  Trinity  Church 
through  Miss  Frances  Blake.  Francie  could  hardly  hold 
upright  the  big  staff  with  its  weight  of  drooping  banner  ;  she 
was  very  much  agitated,  spoke  in  a  low,  tremulous  voice, 
and  may  have  forgot  the  most  of  her  speech,  for  all  that 
Burke  heard  of  it  was  the  single  sentence:  a Captain,  in  con 
sideration  of  your  distinguished  valor  and  patriotism,  we 
present  you  this  flag,"  with  which  the  emblem  was  handed 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT   BEHIND   ME  331 

over  to  him.  The  valorous  and  patriotic  captain  himself 
was  somewhat  confused,  and  the  few  words  he  managed 
to  stammer  out  bore  no  slightest  resemblance  either  to  what 
he  had  meant  to  say,  or  to  the  magnificently  appropriate 
sentiment  credited  to  him  by  the  morning  paper:  "So  long 
as  life  nerved  his  arm,  or  his  heart  beat  high  with  hope,  that 
flag  should  never  be  disgraced!"  You  may  see  it  this  mo 
ment,  rolled  up  and  ticketed  with  a  score  of  others  behind 
glass  doors  in  the  collection  at  the  State  House.  After  the 
solemnity  was  over,  we  broke  ranks,  and  officers  and  men 
" partook  of  an  elegant  collation,"  served  by  the  flounced 
and  ribboned  regiment  themselves;  there  were  lemonade  and 
rich  cakes  and  coffee  and  jellies  and  frozen  creams,  and  a 
great  deal  of  hospitality  and  brave  smiling,  and,  I  dare  say, 
some  aching  hearts.  When  Jim  said  that  Miss  Blake  looked 
like  an  angel.  Burke  acquiesced  heartily  if  a  little  absently; 
he  was  thinking  of  his  own  angel,  who  had  been  there,  too, 
wearing  a  garnet  brooch  and  ear-rings  which  the  young 
fellow  had  given  her,  and  looking  very  fresh  and  sprightly 
in  spite  of  the  anxiety  she  must  have  felt  for  him.  Mary  was 
braver  than  most  women,  he  thought;  she  had  a  spirit  like 
that  of  Rebecca  in  "Ivanhoe."  Nevertheless,  he  liked  to 
think  that  she  had  shed  a  few  tears  against  his  gilt  buttons 
when  he  had  held  her  tight  at  their  final  parting  an  hour 
ago  —  but  had  she  ?  She  had  stoutly  told  him  she  was  re 
solved  not  to  be  foolish.  Mrs.  Sharpless,  on  the  other  hand, 
who  was  fond  of  him,  and  of  a  firm  will  too,  had  broken  down 
and  sniffed  and  sobbed.  And  now,  as  they  sat  together,  Jim 
broke  a  long  silence  by  saying  with  something  of  an  effort:  — 

"I  suppose,  Nat,  if  I  were  a  Christian,  I  should  say,  'God 
bless  you!" 

"The  wish  is  the  same  —  no  difference  what  words  you 
say  it  in,  it  seems  to  me,"  said  Burke. 

And  they  sat  for  another  long  while  in  silence,  each  think 
ing,  no  doubt,  that  all  our  belief,  and  all  our  religion,  and  all 
our  hope  of  immortality  comes  to  no  more  than  this  in  the 
end:  "Oh,  remember  me  a  little  when  the  grass  is  green  over 
me!  Think  of  me  sometimes  kindly!" 

The  next  day  our  volunteers  marched.  It  was  early,  but 
the  town  turned  out  to  see  them  go,  and  the  sidewalks  were 


332  NATHAN   BURKE 

packed  and  there  was  vigorous  cheering.  The  sun  winked 
on  the  window-panes,  where  all  the  green-painted  shutters 
were  flung  back,  and  many  heads  thrust  forth;  there  were 
more  ribbons  and  white  skirts  on  the  balconies  and  porches; 
the  little  old-fashioned  hundred-leaf  roses  were  in  multitudi 
nous  bloom  above  the  white  palings.  Market-wagons  and 
drovers  pulled  up  at  the  crossings  as  the  troops  marched  by; 
the  maids  hanging  out  clothes  in  the  yards  or  scrubbing  steps 
dropped  everything  and  ran  to  the  street.  Children  tumbled 
out  of  bed  with  their  frowzy  heads  and  small  night-dresses; 
people  jumped  up  from  the  breakfast  table  and  left  the  coffee 
pot  cooling.  Here  they  come!  Rub-a-dub-dub,  the  drum 
—  and  likewise  tweedle-eedle-eedle,  the  fife!  "The  Girl  I 
Left  Behind  Me! "  There  is  a  kind  of  heart-breaking  gayety 
about  this  old  tune.  Here  they  come,  very  fresh,  natty,  and 
jaunty,  very  young,  strong,  and  light-hearted,  very  confident 
of  fame,  honors,  rewards,  and  —  the  girl  I  left  behind  me ! 
Rub-a-dub-dub  —  tweedle-eedle  —  ee!  That  stout  young 
ster  in  the  front  rank  with  his  flushed  face,  his  eager  eyes, 
with  all  his  visions  of  war  and  conquest,  Arabian  Nights 
palaces,  senoritas  Mejicanas,  perhaps  —  dear  me,  why  not  ? 
We  didn't  all  leave  girls  behind  us !  —  that  boy  died  of  a 
sunstroke  the  day  after  we  landed.  I  have  forgot  his  name; 
we  buried  him  there  in  the  sand  at  Brazos  Santiago,  and  the 
sea  is  very  loud  above  his  grave.  That  other  young  fellow 
with  the  ploughman  walk,  carrying  our  new  flag  so  proudly 
with  his  white  cotton  gloves  wrinkling  off  his  finger-ends, 
and  the  perspiration  glimmering  in  all  the  creases  of  his 
honest  sunburnt  neck  —  he  got  a  shot  in  the  throat  and  fell 
just  in  front  of  me  that  time  we  charged  the  Teneria;  he 
came  from  my  part  of  the  country,  some  relation  of  old  Pas- 
coe,  I  think.  Hurrah,  hurrah!  Good-by,  Jack;  good-by, 
Jill!  It's  forty  years  since  you  parted,  may  you  rest  well! 
Old  Nat  Burke  will  go  and  smoke  a  pipe  in  the  chimney- 
corner;  and  having  seen  War,  will  thank  his  God  for  Peace. 

One  young  person  rose  early  with  the  rest  of  the  world 
that  morning;  but,  evading  the  others  of  her  family,  ran 
away  and  reached  a  corner  where  she  posted  herself  at  the 
top  of  a  flight  of  steps,  alongside  a  worthy  Irish  body  who  had 
just  been  engaged  with  a  pail  and  broom  in  sluicing  them 


THE   GIRL   I   LEFT   BEHIND   ME  333 

down.  "It's  looldn'  fr  y'r  swatehearrt  ye'll  be  afther?"  she 
said  sympathetically;  "well,  it's  nayther  chick  n'r  child  I've 
got  among  thim  poor  byes,  but  I  feel  sorry  fr  thim  just  th' 
same,"  and  indeed  she  wept  profusely  and  adjured  the  Vir 
gin  as  they  came  by.  The  young  person  said  nothing;  her 
eyes  ached  as  she  scanned  the  lines  —  the  Montgomery 
Guards  —  the  Harrison  Grays  —  Captain  Walworth  on 
horseback  —  Captain  Burke  marching  at  the  head  of  his 
men.  He  did  not  look  around ;  he  did  not  see  her;  and  pres 
ently  the  sound  of  the  music  died  away. 


PAET   II 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  MAIL-BAG 

The  Hon'ble  Samuel  Gwynne  to 

Messrs.  Wylie  &  Slemm, 
Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

July  15,  1846 

Messrs.  Wylie  &  Slemm, 
GENTLEMEN  : 

Your  letter  of  the  13th.  inst.  has  been  rec'd.  In  reply  I 
beg  to  state  that  I  have  known  a  Mr.  Nathan  Burke  of  this 
city  for  some  years,  and  while  I  am  not  acquainted  with  the 
place  or  circumstances  of  his  birth,  or  the  names  of  his  par 
ents,  I  believe  him  to  be  the  young  man  about  whom  you 
inquire,  as  there  is  no  other  Nathan  Burke  to  my  knowledge 
in  our  city. 

Mr.  Burke  is  now,  I  should  judge,  about  twenty-five  years 
of  age  —  which  corresponds  with  your  conjecture  —  and  has 
probably  lived  here  upwards  of  ten  years,  being  engaged  for 
the  last  four  in  the  practice  of  Law.  Previous  to  that  —  as 
you  correctly  state  —  he  studied  for  a  year  or  more  in  my 
office,  which  I  may  say  without  undue  complacency,  has 
always  been  open  to  honest  and  ambitious  talent,  however 
poor  or  modest  its  externals.  Mr.  Burke  appeared  to  me  to 
possess  in  a  marked  degree,  prudence,  integrity  and  good 
sense;  he  bears  the  best  of  reputations  in  our  community. 
Although  unable  to  furnish  them  myself,  I  do  not  doubt  that 
the  details  of  his  earlier  years  will  be  easily  discoverable; 
your  sources  of  information  seem  to  be  unusually  reliable, 
and  the  young  man's  whole  life,  I  am  confident,  has  been 
passed  in  this  section  of  the  country. 

Respectfully, 

334 


THE   MAIL-BAG  335 

(copy) 

Archer  Lewis,  Esq.,  to 

Captain  N.  Burke 
First  Regmt.  O.  V.  I. 

Point  Isabel,  Mexico.  July  15,  '46 

DEAR  BURKE, 

The  enclosed  letter1  came  into  the  office  this  morning; 
and  though  it  is  marked  private  I  opened  it  according  to  our 
agreement.  I  hadn't  gone  very  far,  of  course,  before  I  saw 
that  it  was  of  a  strictly  personal  nature;  and  not  knowing  ex 
actly  how  important  it  might  be  to  you,  took  a  copy  for  safety 
and  future  reference,  and  am  now  forwarding  the  original. 
Also  wrote  Messrs  Wylie  &  Slemm  explaining  your  where 
abouts,  and  that  I  myself  couldn't  give  them  any  reliable 
information,  beyond  the  fact  that  your  mother's  maiden- 
name  was  certainly  Mary  Granger,  as  they  themselves  seem 
to  know  already;  and  wound  up  by  referring  them  to  Pascoe 
and  Williams  as  the  only  people  I  knew  of  who  would  be 
likely  to  remember  your  family  or  could  speak  with  any 
sort  of  authority  about  your  mother  and  father.  Afterwards 
up  at  the  Court-House  this  afternoon,  I  met  McCormick  and 
Townley  whom  you  recall  —  they  are  both  up  here  on  cases 
—  and  another  Cincinnati  man  named  Hammond,  editor  of 
the  "  Gazette,"  I  think,  and  put  a  few  inquiries  about  the 
firm  of  Wylie  &  Slemm,  thinking  they  were  all  men  actively 
engaged  in  business  and  likely  to  know  everybody ;  but  none 
of  them  knew  anything  about  W.  &  S.  It's  funny,  if  they  had 
been  a  month  or  so  more  forehanded  with  their  questions  they 
might  have  caught  you  at  Camp  Washington  when  you  were 
there  with  the  troops.  They  seem  to  be  rather  mysterious 
and  secretive,  judging  from  the  tone  of  their  letter.  If  you 
find  you're  the  long-lost  heir  to  the  earldom,  like  the  fellows 
in  Scott,  don't  get  shot  without  making  your  will  first  and 
remembering  your  humble  friends  and  business  associates. 

All  well  and  everything  as  usual  in  the  old  town.  I  saw 
Her  on  the  street  the  other  day,  but  only  to  bow  to;  she 
looked  all  right. 

Faithfully  yours, 

A.  B.  LEWIS. 

1  Neither  the  original  letter  nor  copy  could  be  found;  they  were 
probably  destroyed.  —  M.  S.  W. 


336  NATHAN   BURKE 

James  Sharpless,  Esq.,  to 

Captain  N.  Burke  July  20,  1846. 

DEAR  NAT, 

Your  last  letter  dated  at  New  Orleans  the  fifth  finally 
arrived,  looking  footsore  and  weary  a  couple  of  days  ago; 
and  Miss  F.  B.  to  whom  I  showed  it  that  very  evening,  re 
marked  tremulously  that,  Thank  Heaven,  he  wasn't  shot 
yet!  which,  considering  that  you  haven't  been  exposed  so 
far  to  any  fire  more  dangerous  than  that  of  your  own  pistol 
with  which  you  are  esteemed  a  pretty  handy  man,  seemed  to 
me  touching  but  uncalled-for.  Still,  it's  a  very  pleasant 
thing,  Nathan,  to  think  that  some  woman  is  anxious  and  glad 
and  relieved  about  you  —  heigh-ho !  A  very  pleasant  thing 
indeed!  You'll  make  war  and  your  foes  you'll  conquer,  ven 
geance  for  your  wrongs  obtaining  —  like  our  friend  Rinaldo  ; 
and  then  you  will  come  home  and  Mary  will  crown  you  with 
laurels,  and  how  grand  will  be  your  mien,  N.  Burke,  with  a 
crown  of  greenery  perched  above  your  long  nose !  Just  now, 
however,  the  chances  for  acquiring  wounds  and  glory  in 
Mexico  seem  to  be  growing  slimmer  every  day;  Taylor  is 
motionless  on  the  Rio  Grande,  we  hear;  Scott,  whose  pen  is 
so  much  mightier  than  his  sword,  continues  to  fulminate  at 
Washington;  and  people  up  here  are  beginning  to  grumble 
that  both  generals  are  sacrificing  a  Mexican  in  the  hand,  so 
to  speak,  for  a  Presidency  in  the  bush  —  a  great  injustice, 
most  probably,  to  each  man,  but  the  public  must  have  its 
say.  What's  a  democratic  form  of  government  for  unless 
you  can  abuse  those  in  authority  ?  Aren't  we  paying  our 
army  and  our  generals  ?  Well,  then,  we're  going  to  say  what 
we  d — n  please  about  'em !  Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo  — -.  oo ! 
Although  we  are  all  master-tacticians  nowadays,  capable  of 
telling  Taylor  exactly  what  to  do  in  these  present  and  any 
other  circumstances,  still  I  have  a  kind  of  lurking  suspicion 
that  the  old  man  knows  his  trade,  and  has  good  reasons  for 
his  inaction;  I  think  he  is  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  neglect 
his  business  for  politics.  And  as  for  Scott  he  cannot  help 
writing  copiously  any  more  than  he  can  help  breathing,  and 
that  unfortunate  " plate  of  soup"  has  dished  his  chances  for 
the  Presidency  anyhow.  What  on  earth  possessed  him? 
The  fellow  has  no  sense  of  humor;  he  may  "step  out  of  the 
office  for  a  hasty  plate  of  soup"  at  dinner-time  as  often  as 


THE   MAIL-BAG  337 

he  chooses,  but  he  ought  not  to  leave  that  information  in  a 
note  lying  on  his  desk;  he  might  know  if  the  newspapers 
ever  got  hold  of  it  the  country  would  never  get  through 
laughing  at  it.  You  hear  nothing  now  but  " hasty  plates" 
of  hash,  " hasty  plates"  of  pork-and-beans,  " hasty  plates" 
of  apple-pie,  " hasty  plates"  of  everything  under  the  sun. 
It's  astonishing  that  a  man  of  real  ability  and  a  proved  soldier 
should  show  himself  once  in  a  while  such  a  self-important 
donkey.  And  after  all  the  rumpus  there  may  be  no  more 
fighting,  and  Taylor  will  come  home  bringing  his  Palo- Alto 
sheaves  with  him,  and  run  for  the  Presidency  on  either  ticket, 
as  they  say  he  is  perfectly  willing  to  do;  and  the  gallant 
First  Ohios  may  be  disbanded  without  striking  a  lick;  and 
Captain  Burke  may  have  to  beat  his  sword  into  a  ploughshare 
—  alas!  And  everything  will  go  on  the  same  jog-trot  as 
before. 

No,  not  quite  the  same,  for  something  rather  out-of-the 
way  has  just  come  to  pass,  and  there  may  be  a  sequel  to  it. 
As  I  sat  here  the  other  day,  muddling  over  a  translation  of 
"Persicos  odi,"  and  against  my  own  will  twisting  the  verse 
into  all  manner  of  grotesqueries  after  the  style  of  Hosea 
Bigelow  — 

"Ez  fer  Persians  —  wa'al,  I  never 
Took  much  stock  in  'em,  my  son. 
Foolin'  round  with  wreaths  forever, 
When  they'd  orter  git  th'  chores  done ! 

Whut  /  say  is :  let  th'  roses 
Go  —  they  cost  a  sight  o'  money. 
Wear  yer  old  blue  jeans  —  them  cloze  is 
Sootable,  ef  they  ain't  toney  — 

As  I  sat  meditating  these  brilliant  lines,  I  say,  there  came  a 
coughing  and  shuffling  at  the  door,  and  presently  a  hesitat 
ing  knock,  on  top  of  which  and  in  response  to  my  invitation 
there  walked  in  a  gentleman  dressed,  sure  enough,  in  jeans, 
pantaloons  tucked  into  the  tops  of  his  rather  massive  boots, 
a  plaid  velveteen  waistcoat  with  gilt  buttons,  a  bottle-green 
cloth  coat  creased  a  dozen  ways  like  a  folding-map,  a  black 
satin  neck-scarf  sprinkled  with  spots  about  the  size  and  color 
of  so  many  rings  of  hard-boiled  egg,  encircling  a  shirt-collar 


338  NATHAN   BURKE 

wilted  to  a  string;  and,  finally,  a  buckeye  hat.  Do  you  recog 
nize  the  wearer  of  this  costume?  You  ought  to.  That  I 
did  not  at  first  is,  after  all,  not  very  surprising,  as  I  have  only 
seen  him  once  or  twice  in  my  whole  life,  and  never  in  such  a 
glory  of  Sunday  clothes. 

"Mister  Sharpies,"  said  the  apparition,  pronouncing  my 
name  thus  —  as  a  good  many  do,  for  that  matter  —  and  then, 
seeing,  doubtless,  that  I  was  quite  at  a  loss,  he  explained: 
"My  name's  Williams  —  'Liph.  I  guess  you've  heerd  Nat 
Burke  talk  'bout  me  —  you're  one  of  his  best  friends,  ain't 
you?" 

"Oh  —  why  —  of  course  —  take  a  seat,  Mr.  Williams,  take 
a  seat.  Er  —  um  —  you  know,  I  suppose,  that  Burke's 
not  here  —  he's  gone  to  Mexico  with  the  army  —  of  course 
you  knew  that,"  said  I,  in  some  confusion,  and  wondering 
mightily  what  Mr.  Williams'  errand  with  me  could  possibly 
be.  For  he  had  the  air  of  having  something  to  communi 
cate;  and,  indeed,  he  began  at  once,  very  simply  and  directly, 
and  not  without  a  slight  look  of  worry. 

"Mister  Sharpies,  I  jest  thort,  bein'  's  I  was  to  town  any 
way  [I  am  repeating  his  own  wrords  as  nearly  as  I  can  re 
member]  I  jest  thort  I'd  drop  erround  to  see  you  'bout  some- 
thin'  thet  come  up  th'  other  day  —  somethin'  'bout  Nat.  I 
went  over  to  Mister  Lewises,  but  he  wa'n't  at  th'  office,  V 
I  ain't  got  time  to  wait.  I  dunno  ez  you  er  any  uv  Nat's 
friends  in  th'  city  knows  —  mebbe  you've  heerd  already  — 
but  they's  some  lawyer  fellers  —  at  least  to  say  they's  one 
lawyer-feller  —  come  up  from  Cincinnati,  V  they're  rakin' 
th'  ken  try  with  a  fine-tooth-comb  fer  to  fin'  Nat,  er  his 
fambly,  er  somebody  that  knows  somethin'  'bout  'em. 
Name  uv  Slemm,  kinder  tall  man  with  a  leetle  cast  in  one 
eye,  V  a  big  seal-ring.  Hez  he  ben  here?  Cuz  ef  he  has, 
why,  o'  course,  you  know  all  about  it  anyway." 

I  told  him  no,  that  I  had  not  met  nor  heard  of  any  such 
person  inquiring  about  you,  whereat  he  wagged  his  head 
sagely,  not  ill-pleased,  I  think,  to  be  the  purveyor  of  this 
interesting  news,  albeit  his  good-hearted  anxiety  about  you. 
"Wa'al,"  he  said,  ruminating,  "mebbe  he  ain't  got  erround 
to  you  yet,  er  mebbe  he  ain't  figurin'  on  seein'  you  at  all,  's 
long  's  you  can't  know  much  of  anythin'  'bout  Nat's  folks 
anyhow.  Fact  is,  ye  see,  Nat  ain't  got  any  folks  to  mention. 


THE   MAIL-BAG  339 

'N'  you've  only  knowed  him  sence  he  settled  in  town.  But  he 
said  right  out  —  this  here  feller,  this  Slemm  did,  I  mean  — 
thet  he'd  wrote  to  Mister  Lewis,  V  Mister  Lewis  had  re 
ferred  him  to  me.  That's  how-come  he  come  to  see  me. 
Don't  ye  chaw,  Mr.  Sharpies?  I  got  a  plug  here  't'  I'd  be  glad 
fer  ye  to  take  of." 

I  don't  chaw  and  so  declined;  whereupon  'Liph,  feeling 
evidently  that  he  had  conformed  to  all  the  conventions, 
whittled  off  a  comforting  hunk,  and  got  it  into  his  mouth 
before  he  answered  my  question. 

"  You  say  this  Mr.  Slemm  went  out  to  see  you  at  the  farm, 
to  ask  about  Nathan?" 

He  nodded.  "Druv  out  in  a  liv'ry  buggy  V  horse  he'd 
hired  right  down  here  at  th'  corner,"  he  said  circumstantially. 
"  Kinder  dressed-up,  slick-talking  feller,  y'know,  Mister 
Sharpies  —  I  dunno,  uv  course,  mebbe  he's  all  right,  but  he 
pretty  nigh  asked  too  many  questions  fer  me.  I  don't  mind 
folks  bein'  cur'us,  but  not  so  all-fired  cur'us  ez  he  was.  Ye 
see — "  and  here  he  assumed  an  expression  of  profound 
shrewdness  and  worldly  wisdom — "seems  like,  fer  all  he 
was  so  close-mouthed  —  'bout  everythin'  but  his  questions, 
thet  is  —  we  got  th'  idee,  her  'n'  I  did  — 

"Her?"  said  I,  stupidly  enough. 

"Yes,  her  —  my  wife,  y'know,"  he  explained,  staring  a 
little.  "We  got  th'  idee  thet  they  was  somethin'  'bout 
proputty  mixed  up  in  it  —  somethin'  thet  Nat's  father's  er 
mother's  folks  might  uv  owned,  er  mebbe  didn't  own,  but 
jest  took,  like  they  sometimes  did  long  back  in  th'  early  times, 
y'know,  'n'  mebbe  somebody's  goin'  ter  come  on  Nat  fer  it, 
someway  er  other  'n'  jest  regularly  law  th'  poor  young  feller 
out  uv  his  boots.  I've  heerd  uv  things  like  that  happenin'  - 
law's  tricky,  ye  know,"  he  waved  a  vague  comprehensive 
gesture.  "'N'  I  sorter  think  somebody  had  orter  let  Nat 
know  —  f 'r  instance  you  could  write  to  him,  couldn't  you  ? 
You  know  where  to  write  to,  so'd  he'd  be  sure  to  git  it."' 

"Why,  certainly,  Mr.  Williams,"  said  I.  "But  I  really 
don't  think  it's  necessary.  If  these  people  have  already 
applied  to  Mr.  Lewis,  who  is  a  lawyer  himself,  and  in  charge 
of  Burke's  affairs,  it  seems  to  me  everything  must  be  all 
right.  Lewis  would  hardly  have  sent  them  to  you  or  been 
willing  to  help  them  at  all  otherwise." 


340  NATHAN   BURKE 

"  Wa'l,  he's  jest  a  young  feller  same  ez  Nat  is  —  same  ez 
you  air  -  -  V  more  'n  likely  he  don't  suspicion  what  they're 
up  to,"  said  'Liph  —  and  I  saw  his  features  settling  into  that 
look  of  immovable,  iron-bound,  rock-riveted  distrust  which 
seems  peculiar  to  honest  slow  wits;  it  was  plain  to  me  some 
thing  or  somebody  must  have  made  a  very  unfavorable  or 
disturbing  impression  on  Mr.  Williams.  "Whatever  'tis, 
I  don't  want  ter  stick  in,  'n'  mebbe  make  trouble  fer  Nat. 
He'd  ought  ter  to  be  wrote  to  right  off  — 

"Well,  but  he  has  been  told,  ten  to  one,"  I  urged.  "If 
all  this  is  of  any  importance,  Lewis  has  undoubtedly  written 
him  already;  and  you  and  I  know  that  Nathan  is  pretty  well 
able  to  take  care  of  himself.  Now  I  don't  think  you  need  to 
worry,  Mr.  Williams — " 

He  went  steadily  on,  as  if  I  hadn't  said  a  word !  "  Nat  had 
ought  to  be  wrote  to  right  off"  he  said  firmly  and  judicially, 
"I  ain't  very  handy  writin'  myself,  'n'  I  dunno  ez  I  c'ld  git 
it  all  down  first  'n'  last,  so's  he  c'ld  make  it  out.  I  want  Nat 
ter  know  that  me  nor  Lindy  hadn't  any  notion  uv  blabbin' 
erround  'bout  him  'n'  his  folks,  'n'  th'  minute  we  made  out 
what  Slemm  was  after,  we  shet  right  up,  'n'  he  never  got 
another  thing  out'n  ary  one  or  other  uv  us.  But  they  was 
one  thing  happened  I'm  sorry  fer  —  dretful  sorry  —  only  it 
couldn't  'a'  ben  helped  hardly.  Ye  see  this  Slemm  feller 
comin'  up  in  his  buggy  with  all  th'  style  he  put  on,  'n'  th' 
dogs  a-runnin'  out  'n'  yoppin'  the  way  dogs  does,  'n'  him 
steppin'  erround  so  grand  'n'  flourishin'  off  his  hat,  'n'  then 
settin'  down  'n'  squarin'  himself  off,  'n'  beginnin'  with  his 
string  uv  questions,  why,  he  got  ev'body  erround  th'  place 
kinder  worked  up.  'N'  they  was  three-four  uv  th'  childern 
hangin'  erround  like  childern  will,  ter  watch  him,  'n'  they 
made  a  kinder  racket  'n'  upsettin'  in  th'  house,  'n  th'  first 
thing  you  know  they'd  got  Maw  waked  up.  She's  goin'  on 
ninety  years  old,  ye  know,  Mr.  Sharpies,  'n'  she  kin  see  pretty 
good  still,  but  she's  feeble,  'n'  next-door  to  stone-deef .  Why, 
ord'nar'ly  you  might  fire  off  a  cannon  right  beside  her,  'n' 
she  wouldn't  even  turn  her  head;  she'll  sleep  right  through 
the  almightiest  ragin'  thunder-storm  you  ever  see,  jest  ez 
ca'm  ez  a  baby!  'N'  here  she  went  'n'  waked  up  with  jest  a 
leetle  bit  uv  noise  like  she's  ben  used  to  ev'ry  day  uv  her  life! 
I  dunno  why  it  is  old  people  air  so  everlastin'  pernicketty. 


THE   MAIL-BAG  341 

Hey?  No,  she  ain't  my  mother  —  she's  her  mother.  Her 
name's  Darce.  She'd  ben  settin'  in  her  big  chair  kinder  all 
humped  up,  'n'  not  payin'  no  'tention,  same  ez  she  always  is, 
when  Slemm  he  come  in,  'n'  she  never  even  looked  up,  at  first. 
But  ez  I  was  sayin'  when  she  did  wake  up,  she  sorter  beckoned 
to  Mary  Ann  thet  she  always  unnerstan's  better'n  anybody 
else,  somehow,  'n'  sez,  '  What  is  it  ?  What  did  yer  paw  say  ? ' 
'He's  talkin'  ter  th'  strange  man,  Gram'maw!'  sez  little 
Mary  Ann,  a-yellin'  —  ye  got  ter  yell  to  make  her  hear, 
y'know.  'What  strange  man?  What's  his  name?'  'I 
don't  guess  he's  got  any  name  —  he  didn't  say,'  sez  Mary 
Anne,  jest  like  a  child.  'N'  thet  made  Slemm  laugh.  '  Wa'al, 
what's  he  want  anyhow?'  sez  Maw,  jest  pre-bent  'n'  deter 
mined  like  old  people  git  oncet  in  a  while,  on  findin'  out  all 
'bout  everythin'  thet's  goin'  on,  'n'  havin'  a  finger  in  th'  pie; 
seems  like  they  jest  nachelly  can't  bear  to  set  back  'n'  give 
up.  '  I  dunno  what  he  wants,'  sez  Mary  Anne,  kinder  fright 
ened,  with  th'  strange  man  lookin'  at  her,  'n'  everybody 
listening  'n'  her  maw  makin'  a  face  at  her  to  quit  'n'  keep 
quiet.  'I  dunno'  sez  pore  little  Mary  Ann,  ready  to  cry. 
1  He's  askin'  'bout  somebody  —  somebody  named  Nathan, 
I  dunno  who  it  is.'  Ye  see,  Mary  Ann,  she  ain't  hardly 
ever  seen  Nat;  she  was  borned  after  he  went  away.  'Na 
than  who  ?  Nathan  Granger  ?  Tell  him  he's  dead  —  least 
ways  I  mind  somebody  sayin'  he  was  dead.  He  must  be  old 
'nuff  ter  die  anyhow.  I  ain't  seen  him  in  years.  We  come 
over  th'  mountains  tergether  'long  back,  'n'  I  ain't  seen  him 
sence—  'What!'  sez  Slemm  jest  like  that.  'What!'  sez 
he,  'Nathan  Granger!'  'N'  he  moved  over  'n'  set  down 
'longside  uv  Maw.  'This  is  very  interestin','  sez  he  in  thet 
slick  way  he  has.  'You  say  you  come  over  th'  Alleghenies 
with  other  pioneers,  ma'am —  Ter  th'  Lord's  sake, 
mister'  sez  I,  'don't  git  th'  old  woman  started  —  not  on  thet 
mountain-trip  anyhow.  It'll  rip  th'  throat  out  uv  ye  to 
talk  to  her,  'n'  she  don't  know  nothin'  but  ol'  times,  anyhow. 
She  fergits  what  happened  this  week  mebbe,  'n'  she'll  talk  to 
ye  by  th'  hour  'bout  things  thet  happened  fifty  years  ago 
when  she  was  young.'  He  looked  real  pleased!  'Ye  don't 
say!'  sez  he,  kinder  smilin'.  'Well,  now,  thet's  jest  what  I'd 
like  first-rate  to  hear  about,'  sez  he  sorter  settlin'  down. 
'N',  Mr.  Sharpies,  durned  ef  he  didn't  set  there  'n'  holler  at 


342  NATHAN   BURKE 

Maw  fer  close  on  to  two  hours!  I'll  bet  th'  pore  old  woman 
ain't  had  sech  a  good  time  sence  she  useter  be  right  spry  an' 
go  erround  ter  lay  folks  out  V  funerals  V  sech.' " 

He  went  on  to  say  that  by  this  dauntless  pertinacity,  Mr. 
Slemm  —  for  whom  I  began  to  have  some  sympathy  in  his 
task!  —  finally  got  out  of  old  Mrs.  Darce  all  she  could  remem 
ber  about  Nathan  Granger.  They  had  met  in  the  early  days 
'of  emigration  to  these  settlements;  they  didn't  come  from 
the  same  place.  Her  folks  was  Connecticut;  she  didn't 
know  where  Granger  hailed  from,  except  that  it  was  up 
No'th  somewheres,  up  to  Canady.  She  heard  once  long  back 
a  good  while  thet  Granger  he'd  died  of  th'  fever  down  to 
Muskingum  County;  she  c'ld  hev'  asked  his  darter  'bout  it, 
but  somehow  she  never  thort  to.  They  wan't  any  Grangers 
left  erroun'  anywheres  thet  she  knew  of.  Yes,  oh  yes, 
Nathan  Granger  he  hed  childern  —  she  couldn't  jest  say  how 
many,  er  whether  they  was  boys  or  girls,  er  what  became  of 
'em.  All  excep'  that  pore  little  Mary  Granger,  her  that 
married  John  Burke,  that  is.  John  Burke  he  come  an' 
settled  right  here  on  th'  Scioty,  and  his  wife  she  died  inside 
th'  year,  when  th'  baby  was  born.  It  was  awful  cold  bein' 
th'  first  o'  th'  year,  V  'peared  like  she  was  jest  clean  tuckered 
out,  'n'  couldn't  nachelly  stand  any  more;  she  died  day  er 
two  after  the  baby  come.  Mrs.  Darce  helped  nurse  her  and 
laid  her  out.  She  wanted  th'  baby  sh'ld  be  named  Nathan, 
so  they  done  it.  Then  John  Burke  he  died  —  he  got 
drownded  giggin'  fer  fish  through  th'  ice  that  winter  they 
hed  th'  big  freeze. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  indefatigable  Slemm,  man 
of  many  devices,  led  the  conversation  back  to  the  original 
topic  by  inquiring  if-  Granger  had  any  means  —  owned 
property  hereabouts,  for  instance  —  which  seems  to  have 
been  one  of  the  questions  that  somehow  aroused  'Liph's 
suspicions.  However,  the  results  were  rather  meagre.  Mrs. 
Darce  remembered  hearing  him  or  somebody  else  say  that 
th'  Gov'ment  had  give  him  land  somewheres  —  mebbe  'twas 
in  Franklin  County  —  she  couldn't  say.  'Twan't  up  in  th' 
Western  Reserve,  though  —  she  appears  to  have  been  very 
decided  about  that  —  'cuz  he  hadn't  fit  in  th'  Revolution,  or 
if  he  had,  'twan't  fer  th'  States,  'twas  fer  th'  Britishers. 
'Twas  only  them  that  fit  fer  th'  States  that  got  th'  land  give 


THE   MAIL-BAG  343 

'em  up  in  th'  Reserve,  yeh  know.  No,  she  didn't  know  where 
he  meant  to  settle  —  didn't  know  nothin'  'bout  Granger's 
business.  She  never  was  no  great  hand  to  ask  questions — 
some  folks  'was,  but  she  wan't  ever.  She  remembered 
Granger  pertickler  becuz  although  he  was  a  young  man,  not 
more'n  forty  —  ("  Forty  seems  mighty  young  to  her,  ye  know, 
mister,"  said 'Liph  apologetically) —  his  hair  wasgittin'  white 
all  over.  Also  he  was  a  turrible  good  shot  with  a  rifle  —  she 
never  seen  anybody  thet  c'ld  shoot  ekal  to  Granger  'less'n  it 
was  Jake  Darnell.  Might  ask  him,  ef  yeh  wanted  to  know 
'bout  Granger  er  Burke  —  he  knew  'em  both.  Oh,  yes, 
she'd  plumb  fergot  Jake  was  dead  —  she  fergot,  times. 
"  Lindy,  where's  my  pipe  ?  "  "  Maw,  she  got  real  peevish  V 
tired  out  herself,  'fore  he  got  done  with  her,"  'Liph  remarked. 

And  so  down  goes  the  curtain  on  old  Mrs.  Darce  and  the 
inquiry.  This  was  what  Williams  was  so  painfully  anxious 
for  you  to  know,  and  I  undertook  to  write  you  the  entire 
story.  I  pointed  out,  to  quiet  him,  that  Slemm  might  have 
exactly  the  opposite  object  from  what  'Liph  suspected  —  that 
he  might  be  trying  to  establish  some  claim  to  an  estate,  or  to 
get  a  what-d'ye-call-'em?  —  an  instrument  to  quiet  a  title. 
But  'Liph  shook  his  head  gloomily  —  and,  frankly,  it  seems 
to  me  his  distrust  of  Slemm  cannot  be  wholly  due  to  a  bucolic 
wariness;  the  man's  manner  must  have  contributed  more  or 
less  to  rousing  that  feeling.  I  should  dislike  to  see  you 
lawed  out  of  your  boots,  Nat.  It's  a  ridiculous  prejudice,  of 
course,  but  personally  I  feel  an  inclination  to  look  askant 
on  these  fellows  with  smooth,  insipid  names  such  as  —  as 
Slemm,  for  instance.  There's  Slaney  —  he's  an  example! 

This  is  a  fatiguing  long  letter  for  you  to  wade  through, 
but  I  promised  Williams.  Duty  performed  is  a  rainbow  in 
the  soul !  Indeed,  most  of  our  letters  here  can  only  interest 
you  because  they  are  from  home;  the  town  is  dull;  we  look 
to  you  for  the  real  news.  But  somehow  I  can't  get  the  late 
lamented  Mr.  Granger  and  his  youthful  white  head,  and  his 
prowess  with  the  rifle,  out  of  my  mind.  Do  you  know  that, 
before  you  left,  I  noticed  that  you  were  getting  quite  gray  at 
the  temples?  And  as  for  your  rifle-shooting  —  "eye  sartain 
-finger  lightning  —  aim  death!"  as  was  observed  of  Mr. 
Leatherstocking  Bumppo,  whose  name  was  Nat,  too,  by  the 
way. 


344  NATHAN   BURKE 

It  is  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  I  am  falling  asleep 
as  you  will  have  judged  already  by  some  of  this  drivel. 
Good-bye. 

Affectionately, 

JIM. 

Lieutenant  George  Ducey  to  his  mother 

Camp  on  the  Rio  Grande,  Aug.  '46 
MY  DEAR  MOTHER, 

We  marched  up  here  last  week  to  a  place  on  the  river- 
bank  which  is  opposite  a  little  dog-hole  of  a  Mexican  town 
called  Burrito,  that  is  donkey  in  Spanish.1  I,  for  one,  am 
mighty  glad  to  get  out  of  the  camp  at  the  Boca  del  Rio,  the 
mouth  of  the  river  you  know,  which  was  an  awful  hole  worse 
than  this,  hot  and  muddy  and  the  biggest  mosquitos  you 
ever  saw  —  regular  gally-nippers.  I  went  myself  to  ever 
so  many  of  the  commanding  officers  and  told  them  in  my 
opinion  we  ought  to  be  moved,  but  nothing  was  done  for 
quite  a  while.  And  I  must  say  that  I  was  very  much  surprised 
to  find  out  what  sort  of  people  our  highest  officers  are  —  noth 
ing  but  rough,  common  men,  without  the  least  education  or 
manners.  AVhen  I  saw  Colonel  Twiggs  he  had  a  two-days' 
beard,  and  swore  fit  to  raise  your  hair  every  other  \vord. 
Yet  they've  made  him  a  brigadeer-general.  This  is  suposed 
to  be  a  much  healthier  place  than  our  camp  at  the  Boca ; 
but  we  never  would  have  got  up  here  if  the  regimental 
doctors  had  not  told  Taylor  that  he  must  move  us  to  another 
camp  mucho  pronto,  just  as  I  had  suggested,  or  all  the  men 
would  be  too  enferma  to  fight.  We  are  a  little  more  com 
fortable  here.  You  couldn't  get  any  washing  done  at  the 
Boca  for  love  or  money,  but  I've  found  a  muchacha  here 
(that  is  one  of  the  native  women,  you  know)  who  took  my 
shirts  and  did  them  up  tolerably  well,  though  not  as  they 
would  have  been  done  at  home.  I  carefully  explained  to 
her  how  to  starch  them  in  Spanish,  but  she  seemed  to  be 
very  stupid,  and  just  wouldn't  understand  a  single  palabra. 
A  palabra  is  a  word,  you  know.  I  expect  I  ought  to  apollo- 
gize  for  using  Spanish  to  you,  but  I  simply  can't  help  it. 
I  picked  it  up  right  away,  and  have  got  into  the  habit  so 

1  Lieutenant  Ducey 's  information,  like  his  spelling,  will  be  found 
somewhat  inaccurate.  —  ED. 


THE   MAIL-BAG  345 

sometimes  I'm  afraid  I'll  forget  my  English.  Everybody 
says  it's  wonderful  how  quick  I  learned  it;  nobody  else  can 
ablar  Espanol  hardly  at  all  yet,  and  I  notice  that  some  of  my 
brother-officers  are  a  little  jealous  and  inclined  to  make 
sneering  remarks,  and  it's  funny  to  see  how  they'll  make 
signs,  or  take  any  kind  of  trouble  rather  than  ask  me  to 
translate  for  them.  I  don't  offer  to  help  them,  as  I  don't 
propose  to  be  made  use  of  that  way.  They  can  pay  people 
to  do  their  translating  if  they  want  to. 

Speaking  of  pay,  I'm  glad  I  don't  have  to  pay  any  more 
than  I  do,  for  your  dinero  (money)  don't  last  long  here  as  it 
is.  These  Mexicanos  are  the  worst  robbers;  they  charge  you 
the  mas  (most)  exorbitant  prices  for  everything,  even  the 
commonest  necessities  of  life.  It  takes  every  cent  I've  got 
for  bare  comfort,  and  don't  leave  anything  in  case  of  emer 
gencies.  Don't  worry  though;  I  can  manage  somehow, 
I  supose.  The  only  serious  question  is  if  I  should  get  sick 
like  our  other  brave  fellows,  I  wouldn't  have  enough  to  pay 
for  being  taken  care  of;  however,  I  guess  I  could  get  along 
by  myself,  unless  I  got  the  vomito,  which  is  almost  sure  to 
be  fatal,  especially  when  the  patient  is  neglected.  There  is 
a  good  deal  of  vomito  around,  but  it  hasn't  got  eppidemic 
yet. 

Everybody  has  been  across  the  rio  to  take  a  look  at  Burito; 
and  some  have  been  up  to  see  Matamoras  which  is  a  few 
miles  up  the  rio,  and  you  can  go  on  the  steam-transport- 
boat.  I  went  the  other  day,  and  thereby  hangs  a  tail.  Don't 
read  this  part  before  Francie,  until  you've  read  it  all  to  your 
self.  I  myself  think  she  ought  to  be  told,  as  she  and  all  of  you 
have  always  thought  Captain  Burke  was  such  a  model  young 
man.  I  never  thought  so,  because  I  don't  tell  all  I  know 
not  by  a  good  deal,  but  this  is  so  fragrant  it  wouldn't  be  right 
to  keep  it  in  the  dark.  I  question  whether  a  man  of  his 
habits  ought  to  be  allowed  to  go  around  and  mix  with  people 
one  knows,  ladies  especially.  To  begin  at  the  beginning 
when  we  were  down  at  the  Boca  where  we  had  to  stay  for 
more  than  a  week,  we  used  to  see  all  the  boats  with  stuff 
for  the  army  coming  in  from  New  Orleans  and  New  York 
and  the  transports  and  volunteers  landing  every  day,  quite 
a  sight ;  and  one  day  one  of  them  had  on  board  a  lot  of  actors 
going  on  up  to  Matamoras  which  is  a  pretty  big  town  you 


346  NATHAN   BURKE 

know,  for  this  country,  and  has  a  theatre  or  some  place  where 
they  give  performances.  There  were  several  ladies  —  you 
can  imagine  what  kind  they  were  —  sitting  on  the  decks  with 
some  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  troupe,  with  wine  which  they 
were  drinking  out  of  the  bottles,  and  they  had  got  some  of  the 
pulque  that  they  sell  so  much  of  around  here  of  a  peon  fellow 
on  the  dock  and  were  drinking  that,  too,  and  calling  out  to 
us  on  land,  and  singing  and  cutting  up  high  jinks  generally. 
Some  of  our  fellows  were  looking  on,  of  course,  men  and 
officers  both,  and  I  said  to  Kennard  of  the  Baltimore  Bat 
talion  (they  are  camped  next  to  us)  "  Isn't  that  perfectly 
disgusting?7'  Kennard  didn't  say  anything,  and  I  saw  he 
was  looking  very  hard  at  Burke,  who  was  staring  with  all  his 
eyes  at  somebody  in  the  crowd  on  board,  I  couldn't  make  out 
who.  Then  he  turned  around  and  said  without  seeing  me: 
"  Kennard  I  can't  help  feeling  sorry  for  those  poor  w^omen." 
Afterwards  he  walked  away  very  slowly  and  thoughtfully 
and  I  said  to  Kennard  "  Burke  must  be  hard  hit.  I  wonder 
which  one  the  charmer  was."  Kennard  didn't  answer  for 
a  minute,  then  he  said.  "Oh,  Lord!"  and  he  walked  off, 
too.  He's  a  queer  kind  of  fish,  but  you  meet  ever  so  many 
down  here.  I  could  see,  however,  that  Burke  had  purposely 
avoided  me,  not  wanting,  I  suppose  to  be  caught  at  that 
sort  of  thing  by  anybody  that  knew  him  ;  he  was  always  a 
close-mouthed  fellow  anyhow,  you  know,  and  you  never  can 
tell  what  these  Puritannic  men  are  up  to  in  secret.  That 
was  just  before  we  got  our  marching  orders;  and  the  minute 
we  reached  here  Burke  got  leave  for  twenty-four  hours  and 
went  off  to  Matamoras  and  spent  the  day  and  night,  never 
coming  back  until  the  next  morning  looking  rather  the  worse 
for  wear.  Of  course  that  don't  prove  anything,  but  wait 
and  hear  what  came  next.  He  was  off  duty  again  yesterday 
when  I  went  up,  and  I  saw  him  with  her !  It's  as  plain  as  day 
to  me  now,  and  will  be  to  you  presently  when  I've  told  you 
the  whole  thing.  His  lady-love  must  have  been  one  of  the 
cargo  of  actors,  though,  of  course,  I  didn't  see  everyone  of 
them,  and  certainly  wouldn't  swear  to  having  seen  her.  A 
person  has  to  be  awfully  particular  about  a  thing  like  this, 
and  I  hope  I  know  what's  honorable.  This  just  goes  to  show 
that  some  people  like  the  noble,  immacculate  Captain  are 
pretty  deep,  and  not  quite  so  white  as  they  paint  themselves. 


THE  MAIL-BAG  347 

I  took  a  good  look  at  the  woman,  although  people  like 
that  haven't  any  attractions  for  me,  but  this  was  a  duty; 
and  .  .  . 
(Page  torn  off  and  the  rest  of  the  letter  missing.) 

Mrs.  William  Ducey  to  Mrs.  Cornelia  Marsh. 

(no  date) 
DEAREST  MA 

I  have  only  time  for  a  note  to  enclose  Georgie's  letter 
which  of  course  you  will  want  to  read  as  it  has  just  come  direct 
from  the  army  and  besides  has  other  things  in  it  that  will 
interest  you  even  if  you  aren't  particularly  interested  in  him. 
Please  don't  fail  to  return  it  as  you  know  I  have  kept  every 
scrap  he  has  ever  written  me.  I  know  Ma  you  think  I  am 
ridiculous  about  George  but  if  you  would  just  remember  that 
he's  my  son  and  all  the  child  I've  got  in  the  world  I  don't 
think  you  would  say  the  things  you  did  in  your  last  letter 
which  I  have  to  tell  you  cut  me  awfully.  Of  course  I  know 
George  isn't  perfect  but  you  forget  that  he  is  very  young  and 
his  character  isn't  all  formed  yet  and  sometimes  he  does  say 
funny  things  like  that  about  his  being  so  good  at  Spanish 
when  I  don't  see  how  he  can  be  after  only  two  or  three  weeks 
and  I  dont  think  he  ought  to  have  gone  and  bothered  his 
superior  officers  who  must  have  a  great  deal  on  their  minds 
anyhow  by  telling  them  what  they  ought  to  do  when  they 
must  have  known  more  about  it  than  he  did  and  had  a  great 
deal  more  experience  or  they  wouldn't  be  where  they  are. 
You  see  dear  Ma  I  see  George's  faults  the  same  as  you  do 
but  I  know  that  he  will  get  all  over  them  in  a  little  while 
he's  only  twenty-two  now  and  I  don't  believe  I  had  as  much 
sense  at  twenty-two  as  I  have  now.  I  won't  send  you  any 
more  of  his  letters  as  you  don't  care  to  read  them  but  this 
one  was  important  on  account  of  what  he  says  about  Nathan 
Burke.  It  is  very  shocking.  Do  you  think  Mary  Sharpless 
ought  to  be  told  ?  It  would  be  an  awful  thing  for  any  decent 
girl  let  alone  a  lady  like  Mary  to  marry  such  a  man  but  I 
wouldn't  want  to  be  the  person  to  tell  her  about  him.  Not  that 
I  think  Mary  would  be  heart-broken  over  it  she's  not  that  kind 
and  everybody  here  knows  that  she  just  took  him  because 
she  was  afraid  of  being  an  old  maid  forever  and  she  couldn't 
get  Jack  Vardaman  for  all  her  fishing.  Anyway  Nathan 


348  NATHAN   BURKE 

may  get  shot  in  the  war  and  one  wouldn't  like  to  bring  up 
anything  against  him  after  he  was  dead  and  if  he  was  to  come 
back  all  crippled  up  Mary  wouldn't  have  him  anyhow  so 
there's  not  much  use  my  worrying.  It's  a  great  deal  better 
to  wait  a  while  and  see  what  happens  for  it  may  all  come 
out  some  other  way  you  know  they  say  murder  will  out. 
I  haven't  told  Francie  but  I  gave  the  letter  to  William  and 
Uncle  George  to  read  and  of  course  they  were  both  very  much 
surprised  the  whole  thing  is  so  strange  and  unexpected  and 
Will  said  Well  truth  is  certainly  stranger  than  fiction  and 
Uncle  George  said  that  By  d —  -  some  people  didn't  know 
the  difference  between  'em.  Nathan's  such  a  favorite  of 
h&'he  simply  won't  believe  anything  against  him,  you  know 
and  then  he  never  did  love  George.  But  I  never  contradict 
Uncle  George  nowadays  he's  getting  so  old  and  feeble  we 
just  let  him  say  what  he  pleases. 

You  know  he  is  going  to  draw  out  of  the  business.  William 
says  by  September  first  Uncle  George  will  be  out  and  the 
partnership  dissolved.  Will  is  so  happy  it  gives  him  a  free 
hand  at  last  and  he  will  be  able  to  do  so  much  better  he  says 
they  have  lost  thousands  of  dollars  this  last  year  by  Uncle 
George's  slowness  and  unwillingness  to  go  into  any  enter 
prise.  I  don't  know  what  Uncle  George  will  do  with  himself 
without  the  store,  but  he  has  plenty  of  money  anyhow  and 
don't  need  to  make  any  more. 

There  isn't  any  news  for  everybody  is  just  sitting  around 
waiting  to  hear  from  the  war.  I  heard  that  Jimmie  Sharp- 
less  was  planning  to  go  but  he's  never  said  a  word  to  us  about 
it  and  I'm  sure  he's  had  plenty  of  chances  for  he's  up  here 
every  night  of  the  world  to  see  Francie.  Poor  Louise 
Andrews  Louise  Gwynne  that  was  you  know  is  very  low  with 
inflammation  of  the  lungs  and  not  expected  to  live.  I  feel 
so  sorry  for  her  husband  and  those  two  little  children. 

My  note  has  stretched  out  into  a  pretty  long  letter  hasn't 
it  ?  Must  stop  now  with  ever  so  much  love 

ANN 

P.S.  I  do  hope  you  won't  feel  hurt  at  what  I  said  about 
what  you  said  about  Georgie  it's  just  that  you  don't  seem  to 
understand  him  and  don't  realize  that  he  hasn't  had  time  to 
develope  yet.  Lovingly  ANN. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN  WHICH  WE  MAKE  SOME  NEW  FRIENDS  AND  MEET  ONE 

OLD  ONE 

MITCHELL'S  regiment,  which  numbered  some  eight  hun 
dred  men,  was  sent  down  by  way  of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi 
rivers  and  the  Gulf,  traversing  the  latter  in  the  first  steam- 
propelled  vessel  many  of  them  had  ever  beheld;  and  during 
this  part  of  the  journey  one  at  least  of  these  eight  hundred 
warriors,  not  being  used  to  salt-water  navigation,  was  in  a 
very  unwarriorlike  state  of  physical  collapse,  so  that  the 
feeblest  of  Mexicans  could  have  made  an  end  of  him  in  short 
order.  The  troops  were  disembarked  July  Fourth  —  which 
should  have  been  a  good  omen  although  everybody  forgot 
the  date  until  days  afterwards !  —  at  the  Brazos  on  a  sandy 
island  where  were  already  collected  several  thousand  volun 
teers,  and  in  this  salubrious  spot  they  remained  for  about  a 
fortnight,  after  which  they  were  moved  first  to  a  camp  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Rio  Grande,  and  later  about  fifteen  miles 
further  up  the  river,  giving  all  of  them  a  chance  to  get 
acquainted  on  the  march  with  "that  d — d  chaparral," 
As  an  obstruction  to  the  passage  of  an  army  it  merited  all 
the  derogatory  comment  passed  upon  it;  but  our  fellows 
took  it  cheerfully  enough ;  they  fell  into  the  habit  of  calling 
any  kind  of  resistant  undergrowth  "chaparral,"  whether 
cactus,  maguey,  mesquite,  or  what-not,  nor  have  I  ever  found 
out  to  what  the  name  actually  and  correctly  applied.  The 
discomforts  of  this  campaign  in  the  middle  of  summer,  with 
torrid  heats,  plunging  downpours  of  rain,  bottomless  mud, 
invincible  dust,  a  plentiful  variety  of  insects  and  vermin 
comparable  only  to  those  that  beset  the  Egyptians,  rations 
not  always  of  the  first  quality,  and  no  immediate  expecta 
tion  of  a  fight  to  raise  the  spirits  —  these  are  incident  to  all 
campaigns  and  need  not  be  dwelt  upon  here.  Captain 
Burke,  who  was  not  without  some  sense  of  humor,  occa 
sionally  wondered  with  a  grin  that  the  title  to  such  a  country 

349 


350  NATHAN   BURKE 

should  ever  have  been  disputed,  or  if  there  was  a  man  in  our 
ranks,  not  excepting  himself,  who  knew  what  we  were  fight 
ing  about!  He  himself  withstood  the  hardships  of  the  life 
tolerably  well,  being  of  a  somewhat  philosophical  turn  of 
mind,  and,  what  was  more  to  the  purpose  perhaps,  of  a  lean, 
tough,  and  enduring  body;  the  expedition  and  encampment 
brought  vaguely  to  his  memory  old  martial  myths,  the 
black  ships,  the  many-tented  plain  of  windy  Troy;  he  had 
read  of  them  how  long  ago  !  when  he  was  a  boy  in  the  stable- 
loft  behind  the  Ducey  house,  stumbling  amongst  the  alien 
names,  and  thrilling  through  all  his  backwoodsman  blood 
to  the  great  sounding  recital  of  adventure  and  conquest. 
Indeed,  the  camp  here  on  the  Rio  Grande,  besides  the  con 
stantly  arriving  and  departing  vessels,  the  crowding  troops 
from  every  State  in  the  Union  with  their  one  speech  and  their 
astounding  variety  of  talk,  the  flying  rumors,  the  alarums 
and  excursions,  was  not  lacking  in  other  points  of  resem 
blance.  General  Twiggs  was  encamped  above  the  town  of 
Matamoros;  General  Worth,  near  at  hand,  below  it;  Gen 
eral  Taylor  himself  just  outside;  heroic  celebrities,  as  great 
to  the  imagination  of  an  obscure  young  captain  of  volunteers 
as  any  that  ever  stalked  through  the  pages  of  the  ^Eneid, 
were  to  be  familiarly  seen,  nay,  even  met  and  talked  with, 
like  ordinary  men,  any  hour  of  the  day.  Burke  himself 
was  actually  presented  to  that  ideal  of  his  earlier  years, 
little  George  Croghan.  The  youthful  defender  of  Fort 
Stephenson  was  now  a  weatherbeaten  veteran  of  sixty-odd, 
still  in  the  service  and  lately  appointed  Inspector  of  Vol 
unteers,  in  which  capacity  Nat  encountered  him.  The  Ohio 
captain,  who  had  ignorantly  supposed  the  inspector  to  be 
some  younger  edition  of  little  Georgie,  was  delighted;  but 
alack,  Colonel  Croghan  turned  out  to  be  an  abrupt,  cold- 
tempered,  elderly  gentleman  with  that  not  very  carefully 
concealed  scorn  of  the  volunteer  service  which  was  enter 
tained  by  some  of  the  regular-army  officers,  and  when  Burke 
ventured  to  mention  Fort  Stephenson  and  to  inquire  if  the 
Colonel  happened  to  remember  a  scout  named  Jake  Darnell, 
-  "Huh  —  Fort  Stephenson  —  huh!"  says  the  other,  scowl 
ing  upon  him;  "Darnell,  huh?  No,  I  never  heard  of  him. 
Never  asked  the  name  of  a  single  damn  scout  in  my  life!" 
with  which  amiable  speech  the  interview  ended. 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS  AND  ONE  OLD  ONE    351 

Drawing-room  manners  were  perhaps  not  to  be  expected  in 
this  great  concourse  of  men  of  all  classes  brought  together,  high 
and  low,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent  for  one  savage  purpose. 
But,  to  tell  the  truth,  Burke  thought  he  discerned  a  certain 
popularity  in  roughness-and-readiness  throughout  the  camp. 
Nobody  could  have  been  more  genuinely  simple  in  his  tastes, 
more  careless  of  display,  more  patient  under  every  kind  of 
makeshift  and  discomfort  than  the  plain  and  sturdy  old 
leader.  It  was  natural  that  those  habits  and  qualities  that 
so  endeared  him  to  the  rank-and-file  and  to  the  American 
public  at  large  should  have  been  imitated,  or  rather  travestied 
and  exaggerated,  by  others  eager  for  the  popularity  to  which 
General  Taylor  himself  never  gave  a  thought.  "  He's  camp 
ing  in  a  tent  up  there  about  a  mile  outside  of  Matamoros 
when  he  might  just  as  well  be  comfortably  housed  in  the 
town,"  one  officer  told  Burke  with  a  look  of  wonder,  de 
scribing  a  recent  visit  he  had  made  to  the  head  of  the  army; 
"he's  made  Twiggs  governor  of  Matamoros,  you  know,  and 
I  expect  he  thinks  this  will  be  more  convenient  and  prevent 
any  clashing  of  authority.  Anyhow,  there  he  is.  His  tent 
is  just  like  all  the  others,  pitched  right  out  in  the  broiling  sun, 
just  a  few  of  these  little  twisted,  gnarled-up  trees  they  grow 
down  here  on  one  side  of  it,  and  not  a  guard  nor  a  sentry  in 
sight,  Burke!  There  was  a  fat  little  youngster,  a  child  of 
some  camp-follower,  I  suppose,  playing  right  outside  it. 
I  got  there  just  as  the  general  was  getting  through  with  a 
deputation  —  of  civilians,  you  know  —  representing  some 
people  in  New  Orleans  that  wanted  to  vote  him  something 
-  I  don't  know  what  it  was  all  about.  Whatever  it  was,  he 
was  declining  the  honor.  I  heard  him  say  that  while  he 
appreciated  their  generosity,  he  thought  there  would  be  a 
certain  impropriety  in  his  receiving  a  reward  for  his  services 
before  the  campaign,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  was  finished. 
And  he  went  on  and  gave  them  a  talk  on  the  mistake  people 
made  in  naming  children  and  places  after  men  before  they 
were  dead!  I  suppose  they  had  wanted  to  do  something  of 
the  kind.  Maybe  it  wasn't  very  politic,  but  I  tell  you  it  was 
good  horse-sense,  and  I  believe  the  committee  saw  it  that 
way.  How  many  other  men  in  public  life  that  people  were 
sounding  for  the  Presidency  would  have  done  it,  do  you  sup 
pose  ?  I'll  bet  there's  not  another  in  the  country  !" 


352  NATHAN   BURKE 

"  Shouldn't  wonder  !"  said  Burke,  thinking,  with  a  smile, 
of  Governor  Gwynne.  "  What  does  he  look  like  ?  " 

"Why,  heavy  set,  rather,  with  gray  hair  —  pretty  near 
white  it  is,  too;  he's  over  sixty,  you  know  —  and  blue  eyes, 
or  gray  eyes,  I  couldn't  say  exactly  —  clean-shaven,  tanned 
like  an  Indian,  of  course.  I  think  he'd  be  a  fair-com- 
plexioned  man  naturally.  He  was  sitting  on  a  dry-goods 
box  with  one  of  those  red  Arkansas  blankets  folded  up  on 
top  of  it  for  a  cushion,  and  he  didn't  have  on  fatigue  uniform, 
but  a  kind  of  a  linen  jacket  and  pantaloons,  and  a  straw 
hat  about  three  feet  wide,  more  or  less.  There  wasn't 
a  thing  in  the  tent  but  his  iron  camp-cot,  and  a  couple  of 
blue-painted  chests  that  he  was  using  for  a  table.  It  might 
have  been  your  tent  or  mine.  No  gold-braid  and  bugle- 
tooting  about  him,  I  tell  you.  I  guess  the  folks  at  home 
would  think  he  looked  more  like  a  Louisiana  planter  than  the 
general  of  the  biggest  army  we've  ever  got  together."  He 
paused,  reflecting  with  a  puckered  forehead,  then  burst  out 
enthusiastically:  "All  the  same,  Burke,  he's  a  general, 
and  about  the  only  one  we've  had  since  Washington  —  of 
course  there's  Scott,  too.  But  I  believe  the  men,  the  regu 
lars,  the  fellows  that  know  him,  would  follow  Zachary  Taylor 
to  hell,  if  he  just  got  on  old  Whitey's  back  and  said,  'Come 
on,  boys ! '  Look  how  fond  they  are  of  him  —  they  talk  about 
him  the  whole  time." 

This  was  true,  as  Burke  had  already  noticed.  He  used  to 
hear  the  camp-fire  gossip :  Old  Zack  did  this,  Old  Zack  said 
that;  even  the  volunteers,  hundreds  of  whom,  like  Burke 
himself,  had  never  yet  seen  him,  had  caught  the  contagion  of 
affectionate  pride  and  confidence.  The  general  had  turned 
out  of  his  bed  to  give  it  to  a  sick  private  in  some  sudden  dearth 
of  beds,  himself  sleeping  rolled  up  in  a  blanket  on  the  ground. 
When  the  two  armies  lay  opposite  each  other  before  Mata- 
moros,  General  Arista  replied  to  the  American  commander's 
remonstrance  that  the  Mexican  soldiers  were  robbing  and 
mutilating  the  bodies  of  the  American  dead  by  the  state 
ment  that  these  atrocities  were  not  committed  by  the  Mexi 
can  army,  but  by  camp-followers  whom  he  could  not  control. 
"When  I  come  over  the  river,  I  will  control  them!"  said  our 
stout  old  chief.  And  he  did.  These  and  a  dozen  other  like 
stories  circulated  among  the  troops;  and  it  may  be  thought 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE   OLD   ONE     353 

a  strange  thing,  but  one,  I  believe,  that  has  been  observed 
before,  that  what  all  these  rough  fellows  admired  and  re 
spected  in  their  leader,  more  even  than  his  courage,  was  his 
humanity. 

The  last-named  quality  was,  however,  either  not  so  ap 
parent  or  not  so  easily  parodied  as  the  rough-and-readiness; 
officers  and  men,  we  became  not  too  fastidious  in  our  habits; 
we  smoked,  we  chewed,  we  drank,  I  fear  our  army  swore 
dreadfully  in  Texas.  We  must  have  been  a  distressing 
spectacle  to  disciplinarians  like  Lieutenant  Ducey.  George 
himself  was  as  much  the  dandy  officer  as  he  had  been  at  home, 
to  the  wonder  and  the  very  great  recreation  of  his  fellow- 
soldiers.  I  have  seen  the  sentries  stare  and  break  into 
smothered  guffaws  behind  his  back  as  the  lieutenant  strutted 
by,  head  up  and  chest  well  thrown  out,  scented,  pink,  and 
shaven,  creaking  in  his  tight  belt,  his  brilliantly  polished 
boots,  twirling  his  moustache,  which  was  a  magnificent 
growth  by  this  time,  and  flashing  killing  glances  out  of  his 
large  dark  eyes  at  any  woman  who  looked  worth  it.  The 
young  man  was  not  more  popular  here  than  he  had  been  at 
home.  What  was  it  that  was  the  matter  with  George  Ducey? 
A  man  need  not  be  less  a  man  for  being  fond  of  fine  clothes 
and  of  looking  in  the  mirror;  there  were  idle  and  worthless 
youths  in  plenty,  there  were  fops  and  braggarts  among  us, 
but  I  am  sure  they  made  some  friends.  George  made  none, 
or  none  that  he  kept.  The  officers,  both  regular  and  volun 
teer,  whom  we  met  would  not  take  him  into  comradeship ; 
Captain  Burke  began  to  hear  disagreeable  rumors;  George 
borrowed  and  did  not  pay;  George  lost  all  his  money  at 
euchre  to  some  expert  and  he  reported  the  fact  to  Colonel 
Mitchell,  and  talked  loud  about  cheating  and  professional 
gamblers  —  "hang  him,  can't  he  keep  his  mouth  shut? 
If  he  will  play,  he  ought  to  take  his  medicine ! "  said  one  young 
fellow  to  another  testily.  " Cheat,  hey?  I  cheat,  do  I?" 
said  the  winner,  with  a  perfectly  brutal  laugh.  "Tell  him 
from  me  that  I'll  spank  him  on  sight!"  These  tales  came 
to  Captain  Burke  only  after  long  and  devious  wanderings 
throughout  the  entire  camp,  for  curiously  enough  there  was 
a  general  impression  that  Ducey  and  he  were  in  some  way 
related,  founded,  perhaps,  on  the  fact  that  they  came  from 
the  same  place  and  were  even  members  of  the  same  com- 
SA 


354  NATHAN   BURKE 

pany;  and  on  one  or  two  occasions  the  captain  had  under 
taken  George's  debts,  being  loath  to  let  washerwomen  and 
such  small  fry  go  unpaid.  So  that  even  General  Twiggs, 
whose  acquaintance  Burke  had  made  some  while  before, 
remarked  to  him  one  day  that  he  understood  that  young 
Ducey  fellow  was  some  connection  of  his  —  was  it  a  step 
brother  ?  Burke  explaining  that  this  was  a  mistake  —  "  Well, 
I'm  glad  to  hear  it,"  said  the  general,  briskly,  adding  in  that 
richly  ornamented  style  of  speech  for  which  he  was  noted: 
"By  G — d,  Captain,  I  was  going  to  say  if  it  was  so,  you  had  a 
d — d  liar  for  a  step-brother ! "  But  I  do  not  think  this  notion 
was  ever  entirely  corrected.  Not  only  at  Matamoros,  but 
later  during  almost  the  whole  time  our  armies  spent  in 
Mexico,  Burke  would  receive  casual  inquiries  about  his  step 
brother,  his  cousin,  even  his  nephew,  for  the  captain  ap 
peared  much  the  elder,  although,  in  fact,  there  were  but 
three  or  four  years  between  them.  It  was  not  until  the 
American  troops  reached  Mexico  City,  after  more  than  a 
year's  campaigning,  that  these  questions  ceased,  and  then 
only  after  various  events  which  influenced  Burke's  fellow- 
officers,  out  of  a  mistaken  kindness,  to  refrain  from  mention 
ing  the  captain's  relative  at  all. 

The  young  man  whom  I  quoted  at  length  a  little  way  back 
was  almost  Burke's  first  acquaintance;  he  belonged  to  the 
Maryland  troops,  and  was  surely  one  of  the  bravest  soldiers 
and  best  gentlemen  that  ever  lived  —  as  indeed  his  whole 
career  testified.  The  friendship  began,  for  an  oddity, 
through  a  fearful  squabble  between  half  a  dozen  companies 
of  their  respective  regiments  over  a  catfish  caught  by  some 
body  on  either  one  or  the  other  side  —  no  one  ever  found  out 
which;  and  this,  occurring  about  twilight  with  oaths,  blows, 
drawn  weapons,  and  a  terrific  riot,  might  have  involved  the 
two  entire  regiments  in  a  bloody  scrimmage  and  had  the  most 
appalling  results,  had  not  a  few  officers  retained  influence  and 
presence  of  mind  enough  to  keep  their  men  in  their  company 
streets,  and  afterwards  running  in  between  the  most  violent, 
succeeded  in  persuading  them  not  to  fire  on  one  another, 
and  finally  brought  them  to  reason.  In  the  course  of  these 
exertions  the  two  captains  encountered,  to  the  vast  relief 
of  each. 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE  OLD   ONE     355 

"  Lord,  I  never  shall  forget  how  I  felt  when  you  started  in/' 
the  Maryland  officer  confided  to  the  other  after  a  truce  had 
been  patched  up,  and  they  walked  away  together  from  the 
field.  "One  shot  would  have  started  them  all,  and  Heaven 
knows  how  many  lives  might  have  been  wasted  in  this  mis 
erable  fuss.  Somebody  had  ordered  your  fellows  to  load  up 
with  ball  cartridge  —  it  was  just  as  bad  on  our  side.  Wat 
son,  our  colonel,  is  off  duty  and  gone  somewhere,  and  for  a 
while  there  didn't  seem  to  be  any  of  our  officers  around  but 
me.  I  saw  you  coming  and  for  a  minute  I  was  afraid  you 
might  be  as  crazy  as  the  rest."  He  stopped,  drew  a  long 
breath,  and  wiped  his  forehead.  "Whew!  I  don't  think 
we'll  have  much  hotter  work  with  the  Mexicans." 

"I  wish  we  could  get  our  men  under  the  same  discipline 
as  the  regulars,"  Burke  said  enviously;  "you  never  hear  of 
any  such  disgraceful  rumpus  between  them.  I  suppose  your 
company  is  just  like  mine  —  some  of  'em  good,  sober,  steady, 
orderly  men  —  some  just  hoodlums  —  some  nothing  but 
boys  out  for  a  frolic.  I  think  they'll  all  fight;  but  that 
doesn't  do  much  good  if  they  won't  obey  orders,  and  behave 
themselves." 

"That's  so,"  assented  the  other.  "We  haven't  heard  the 
last  of  this,  either.  Both  our  colonels  will  probably  make 
complaint  at  headquarters,  you  know."  He  hesitated  a 
moment,  then  put  out  his  hand  and  said  with  a  very  kind, 
straightforward,  and  winning  manner,  "Well,  whatever  bad 
blood  there  is  between  the  men,  that's  no  reason  why  we 
should  be  enemies,  Captain.  My  name's  Kennard  of  the 
Baltimore  Battalion."  Whereupon,  Captain  Burke  naming 
himself  in  turn,  the  two  young  men  shook  hands  heartily. 

The  regiments  being  encamped  side  by  side,  they  saw  more 
or  less  of  each  other  thereafter;  they  used  to  exchange  opin 
ions,  smoking  in  their  tents  in  off  hours,  on  the  conduct  of 
the  campaign,  the  character  of  the  generals,  the  state  of  the 
army,  the  nature  of  the  country,  and  the  Mexicans  themselves, 
for  whom  both  felt  a  sort  of  contemptuous  pity.  The  last 
topic,  indeed,  engrossed  a  good  deal  of  their  talk,  neither  of 
them  ever  having  been  in  a  foreign  country  before.  Kennard, 
coming  from  the  big  eastern  city  with  its  port  on  the  Atlantic, 
its  larger  society,  its  more  cosmopolitan  atmosphere  than 
had  Burke's  little  inland  town,  was  still  hardly  less  impressed 


356  NATHAN    BURKE 

than  the  quondam  farmer-boy,  though  by  very  different 
aspects  of  the  scene.  Nat  surveyed  the  sad,  rain-soaked, 
or  sun-baked  landscape,  the  endless  cactus,  the  Biblical- 
looking  ploughs,  the  donkeys,  the  little  grave  black  oxen, 
the  women  carrying  their  terra-cotta  water-jars  on  their 
heads  after  an  unbelievably  Oriental  fashion,  the  swagger 
ing,  jingling,  lariated,  be-spurred,  and  be-pistolled  ranch 
men,  with  unending  wonder,  and  also,  although  he  was  of  a 
rather  practical  turn,  with  some  appreciation  of  their  pictu 
resque  possibilities.  He  found  himself  reminded  almost  in 
one  breath,  as  it  were,  of  the  Arabian  Nights  and  the  Old 
Testament;  Rebecca,  Naomi,  Sinbad,  and  Ali  Baba  would 
be  equally  at  home  in  Mexico,  and  might  elbow  one  another 
in  the  road  without  incongruity,  he  thought.  Kennard,  on 
the  other  hand,  plainly  suffered,  to  the  exclusion  of  any  other 
sentiment,  from  a  kind  of  depression  at  sight  of  the  ignorance, 
disease,  and  poverty  surrounding  us. 

"  Poor  creatures! "  he  used  to  ejaculate.  "  Did  you  ever  see 
anything  so  wretched,  so  apathetic,  so  near  to  the  brutes  as 
these  peons?  They're  forever  sitting  on  the  ground  —  they 
live  crawling  around  on  the  ground  like  ants;  they  eat  and 
sleep  wherever  they  happen  to  be,  like  dogs.  They  haven't 
any  homes  —  you  can't  call  these  adobe  hovels  they  live  in, 
fifteen  or  twenty  people  all  pigging  together,  you  can't  call 
them  homes.  Why,  our  negro  slaves  wouldn't  live  that  way 
-  we  wouldn't  allow  it  —  we  take  care  of  our  slaves,  and  see 
that  they're  clean  and  healthy  —  I  suppose  you  don't  think 
so,  coming  from  your  State  -  '  he  interrupted  himself, 
glancing  at  his  companion  a  little  sharply,  "but  - 

"Why,  I  should  think  you'd  take  the  best  of  care  of  them," 
said  Burke,  smoking  steadily.  "That  would  be  common 
sense  and  good  policy,  to  say  nothing  of  humanity." 

"Of  course,"  said  the  other,  satisfied;  "but  I  was  going 
to  tell  you  I  went  into  one  of  their  dens  the  other  day,  over 
in  Burito,  just  for  curiosity.  There  were  half  a  dozen  women, 
old  hags  at  twenty-five  or  thirty,  you  know  how  they  get  to 
looking,  one  girl  not  more  than  fourteen  years  old,  I  swear, 
suckling  a  baby.  I  don't  know  how  many  other  babies 
sprawling  on  the  dirt  floor,  stark  naked  two  of  'em,  with  their 
faces  all  broken  out  in  sores  — 

"You  ought  to  be  careful,"  interrupted  Burke;    "you 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE   OLD   ONE    357 

don't  want  to  start  an  epidemic  among  the  men,  let  alone 
getting  some  kind  of  contagion  yourself." 

"  'Twasn't  anything  but  chicken-pox,  I  think,  and  I've 
had  that.  Besides,  the  camp  is  full  of  mumps  and  measles 
anyway  —  the  contagion  I'd  carry  wouldn't  be  a  drop  in  the 
bucket.  There  was  a  live  turkey  tied  by  the  leg  under  a 
shelf,  a  couple  of  men  asleep  —  dead  drunk  —  on  benches. 
Gr-r-ungh !  I  never  saw  a  worse  hole,  no,  not  even  along  the 
water-front  at  home.  The  difference  is  that  you  can't  stop 
to  look  in  at  a  place  like  that  at  home  without  getting  a  crack 
on  the  head  — 

"In  Mexico  it's  more  likely  to  be  a  knife  through  your  back, 
hey?"  said  Burke,  grinning. 

"No,  that's  what  seems  to  me  so  remarkable.  These 
people  are  really  well  disposed  towards  us;  it's  the  way  we've 
acted.  We  pay  as  we  go  and  we  certainly  pay  high,  and  we 
treat  'em  like  human  beings.  One  of  them  that  could  speak 
a  little  English  told  me  the  other  day  that  they  liked  us 
better  than  Arista's  army.  And  these  poor  things  in  the  hut 
looked  up  and  smiled  and  invited  me  in,  and  one  of  the  women 
offered  me  a  tortilla  she'd  just  baked  —  one  of  those  corn- 
meal  cakes  they  make,  you  know.  She  was  slopping  around 
with  the  dough  —  batter  —  whatever  they  call  it,  on  a  slant 
ing  board,  the  way  they  stir  'em  up  —  you've  seen  them  in 
market,  haven't  you  ?  It  wasn't  very  appetizing,  but  I 
took  it  anyhow,  and  threw  it  away  after  I  got  outside." 

' '  I  suppose  those  that  we  buy  in  camp  here,  when  the  women 
come  around  with  the  trays  of  stuff,  are  all  made  the  same 
way  and  in  just  such  places,"  Burke  said.  "They  don't 
taste  bad.  If  we  never  get  any  worse  than  that,  we'll  be 
doing  well.  Is  there  a  market  at  Burito?  I  didn't  see  it." 

"Why,  no,  I  meant  the  market  at  Matamoros.  Haven't 
you  been  there  yet  ?" 

Captain  Burke  had  not  yet  been  to  Matamoros.  Let's 
go  to  Matamoros,  by  all  means.  "It's  a  real  Mexican  town 
—  just  as  Mexican  as  can  be,"  Kennard  told  him.  "I'll 
tell  you  what:  let's  arrange  to  stay  all  night,  and  go  to  the 
theatre.  Don't  you  remember  that  theatrical  company 
we  saw  going  up  the  river?  They're  there  now.  Mata 
moros  is  full  to  the  guards,  you  know  —  all  kinds  of  people. 
Ask  where  they  come  from  and  every  mother's  son  of  ;em 


358  NATHAN    BURKE 

will  tell  you  New  Orleans.  Further  than  that  nobody  knows, 
and  better  not  ask,  I  guess.  I  know  a  fellow  that's  with  the 
regulars  there  —  with  the  artillery.  His  name's  Ridgely, 
and  maybe  I  can  get  him  to  take  us  around." 

Next  day  Captain  Burke  got  his  leave  of  absence  for  the 
twenty-four  hours;  but  Kennard  was  disappointed  of  his, 
so  that  the  first-named  gentleman  was  obliged  regretfully  to 
set  out  alone.  Kennard  scrawled  a  note  of  introduction  to 
Lieutenant  Randolph  Ridgely  of  the  Light  Artillery,  who  was, 
in  fact,  a  member  of  the  lamented  Major  Ringgold's  famous 
battery,  and  had  borne  himself  with  great  gallantry  on  the 
fields  of  Palo  Alto  and  Resaca  —  another  hero  whom  Burke 
was  highly  pleased  to  meet.  Being  furnished  with  this,  the 
captain  went  across  the  river  to  Burito  and  bought  a  wild, 
little,  evil-eyed,  and  cat-motioned  mustang  pony  for  six 
dollars  upon  which  he  proposed  to  make  the  trip;  but  the 
steamboat  Virginia  opportunely  happening  along,  he  took 
passage  on  her  instead,  and  arriving  at  Matamoros  about 
noon,  disembarked  and  wandered  up  into  the  streets,  staring 
with  his  alien  eyes  upon  the  worn  and  antique  town  that 
showed  yellow  and  blue  and  many-colored  walls,  and  roofs 
of  thatch  or  tiles  and  outlandish  semi-tropic  greenery  under 
the  July  sun.  About  all  the  Mexican  towns  that  Burke 
saw  —  although  this  may  have  been  merely  his  perverted 
fancy  —  there  hung  an  invincible  melancholy;  their  busy, 
discordant  market-places,  their  gaudy  shops  were  not  lively; 
even  the  presence  of  the  invader,  whether  they  hated,  or 
liked,  or  only  suffered  us,  could  not  arouse  them  to  anything 
resembling  movement  or  energy;  we  paid  our  way  hand 
somely  and  must  have  brought  them  more  trade  than  they 
ever  had  before  or  since  (surely  the  descendants  of  a  nation 
of  shopkeepers  may  take  a  little  pride  in  that  statement); 
yet  even  so  it  was  as  if  the  spirit  of  the  people  stood  aloof 
and  regarded  us  not  resentfully,  but  with  a  sphinxlike 
detachment,  absorbed  in  its  own  sombre  meditation.  As 
Burke  walked  up  from  the  landings,  there  was  some  bustle 
of  arrival,  the  town  was  full  of  soldiers,  one  of  our  bands  - 
the  Seventh  Regiment,  I  think  —  was  practising  in  the  ala- 
meda,  booming  out  "The  Low-Back'd  Car"  with  all  its 
brazen  lungs,  there  were  people  passing  to  and  fro,  bright 
draperies,  flapping  flags,  yet  one  had  but  to  pause  and  look 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE   OLD   ONE     359 

aside  —  and  lo,  the  vista  of  a  long,  pensive,  silent  street,  high, 
blank  walls,  iron-grated  windows,  glaring,  white,  unkind 
sunlight,  cold  shadow  ,  a  native  woman,  shapeless  under  her 
blue  cotton  head-shawl,  crouching  in  the  dust;  the  scene 
not  two  steps  separated  from  the  first,  yet  ineffably  remote, 
a  piece  of  ancient  civilization  grafted  on  a  commingled  civili 
zation  and  savagery  more  ancient  still  —  old  as  these  estab 
lished  hills.  The  young  fellow,  fresh  from  the  sturdy  drab 
and  homespun  activity  of  his  Ohio  town  that  numbered 
scarcely  more  years  than  himself,  felt  a  slight  depression  at 
this  settled  and  pervasive  antiquity;  the  very  cathedral 
on  the  plaza  looked  venerable,  although  it  was  a  compara 
tively  new  building,  as  yet  unfinished;  he  took  it  at  first 
for  an  interesting  ruin  —  not  the  only  one  he  saw,  for  the 
town  bore  traces  of  our  cannonading  from  Fort  Brown  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  river.  Few  lives  had  been  lost, 
however,  Ampudia  having  evacuated  the  place  almost  with 
out  a  blow.  Nat  had  the  honor  of  dining  in  the  house  lately 
occupied  by  the  Mexican  general,  and  now  converted  into 
the  "  Fonda  del  Comercio"  by  an  enterprising  American. 
Captain  Burke  was  the  guest  within  these  historic  portals 
of  Lieutenant  Ridgely,  to  whom  he  went  and  presented  his 
letter  of  introduction,  and  whom  he  found  to  be  a  most  cor 
dial,  agreeable,  and  soldierly-looking  gentleman,  who  insisted 
on  giving  him  the  Maryland  welcome  of  a  meal. 

"I  can't  answer  for  it,"  he  said  with  a  laugh;  "but  at  any 
rate  it  won't  be  any  worse  than  camp-fare.  Weren't  you 
surprised  to  find  the  place  fairly  boiling  over  with  Ameri 
cans  ?  It's  miraculous  how  quick  they  all  got  here.  Sir,  I 
declare  we  hadn't  been  in  occupation  a  week  when  they  all 
came  down  like  —  like  the  water  at  Lodore  in  the  poem. 
American  goods,  American  drinks,  American  storekeepers, 
faro-dealers,  saloon-men,  gamblers,  horse-thieves  —  they've 
run  the  Mexicans  clean  out  —  never  saw  anything  like  it!" 

Between  this  and  other  speeches  which  the  gallant  lieu 
tenant  delivered  with  great  energy,  eating  and  drinking, 
pressing  the  captain  to  more  rabbit,  more  eggs,  more  fric 
asseed  kidney,  more  coffee  and  soda-biscuit,  and  ordering 
the  slouching  Mexican  waiters  about  in  halting  but  vigor 
ous  Spanish  with  that  extraordinary  manner  at  once  amiable 
and  imperative  in  which  so  many  southerners  address  their 


360  NATHAN   BURKE 

servants  —  between  times  he  pointed  out  to  his  companion 
numbers  of    celebrities,   for  it  appeared  the   "  Fonda  del 
Comercio"  was  much  patronized  by  the  army.     Captain 
Burke  was  not  sorry  to  find  himself  in  this  distinguished  and 
interesting  company.     It  is  one  thing  to  read  in  print  about 
Captain  Walker  and  his  band  of  Texas  Rangers  armed  with 
" Colt's  patent  repeaters,"  who,  fifty  of  them,  had  stood  off 
fifteen  hundred  Mexicans  in  a  pitched  fight  on  the  banks 
of  this  same  Rio  Grande  no  longer  ago  than  last  April  —  it 
is  one  thing  to  read  about  this  exploit,  and  another  to  behold 
a  wiry-looking  gentleman  of  two-  or  three-and-thirty  years, 
tanned  to  the  color  of  a  Mexican  saddle,  peaceably  eating 
pork  and  beans  (with  his  knife)  at  a  table  within  arms' 
length,  and  be  told  that  that  man  is  Captain  Samuel  Walker 
"of  the  Rangers,  you  know."      He  has  on  a  sort  of  nonde 
script  uniform,  his  " patent  repeater,"  nay,  his  two  patent 
repeaters,  may  be  clearly  seen,  hitched  to  his  belt  and  repos 
ing  one  on  either  hip;   he  converses  with  the  waiter  in  that 
nasal  and  singsong  Spanish  peculiar  to  this  country.     The 
volunteer  captain  stares  at  him  unreservedly.     Powers  above, 
what  has  this  man  not  done  and  endured!     What  bloody 
battles  against  desperate  odds  has  he  waged  with  Seminoles, 
Comanches,  Mexicans!     He  has  known  starvation  and  fever 
in  the  horrid  prison-cells  of  Perote  —  escaped  —  been  retaken 
—  escaped  again  a  dozen  times.     At  Salado  Santa  Anna 
condemned  him  and  his  handful  of  wretches  to  decimation  by 
lot  —  one  black  bean  in  the  bowl  of  white  for  every  tenth 
man.     He  escaped  once  more.     "I  should  think  he'd  never 
want  to  see  another  bean!"  Burke  says,  thinking  of  this  in 
cident,  and  observing  with  what  gusto  the  Ranger  is  stowing 
them  away.     His  companion  laughs,  and  an  officer,  who  has 
just  come  in  and  has  been  giving  his  order  in  very  fluent 
and  easy  Spanish,  pauses  by  their  table  and  asks  if  there  is 
room  for  him?     "Why,  of  course,  sir.     General,  my  friend 
Captain  Burke  of  the  First  Ohio.      Burke,   General  Quit- 
man." 

Nat  got  up  and  saluted;  but  the  other  offered  his  hand. 
"Why,  Captain  Burke,  you  and  I  are  in  the  same  boat  and 
ought  to  stand  by  each  other;  we're  nothing  but  volunteers, 
you  know,  and  we're  only  too  glad  to  get  a  little  notice  from 
one  of  these  regulars  —  a  fellow  like  Ridgely,  here,  for  in- 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE    OLD   ONE     361 

stance/'  said  the  general,  pleasantly;  and  went  on  —  as  they 
sat  down  —  to  say  that  he  was  especially  glad  to  meet  the 
men  who  might  presently  come  under  his  personal  command. 
"I  understand  all  the  volunteers  are  to  be  organized  into  a 
field  division  under  Butler  or  Hamer  and  in  all  probability 
I  shall  have  a  brigade." 

"  You'll  get  your  own  Mississippi  men,  and  some  of  the 
other  troops  from  the  Southern  States,"  Ridgely  prophesied 
blithely;  "the  Southern  men  had  better  be  all  shaken  down 
together.  Burke  here  can  tell  you  that,"  he  said,  winking. 
Quitman,  looking  at  Burke,  smiled  and  asked  if  he  was  one  of 
the  officers  who  had  taken  a  hand  in  quelling  the  disturbance 
the  other  evening  ?  "I  take  an  interest  in  Ohio,"  he  added; 
"I  lived  there  for  a  while  twenty  years  or  so  ago,  when  I  was 
a  young  fellow  about  like  you  —  or  even  younger,  I  guess. 
Do  you  know  anybody  in  D —  County?  " 

Nathan  flushed  up.  "I  was  born  there,"  he  said  with  a 
boyish  stir  of  sentiment  at  the  chance  reference.  Perhaps 
General  Quitman  himself  was  not  ill-pleased  in  this  far  place 
to  meet  some  one  with  whom  he  could  pass  a  common  memory. 
He  talked  quite  eagerly  about  D — and  its  people,  and  the 
Scioto;  and  when  Ridgely  was  obliged  to  go  on  duty  and  the 
little  party  broke  up,  separated  from  them  with  warm  expres 
sions  of  regret. 

Burke,  thrown  once  more  on  his  own  resources,  went  out 
and  roamed  about  the  streets  and  market-house  in  the  laud 
able  purpose  of  acquiring  some  closer  knowledge  of  the  na 
tives,  and  improving  his  command  of  the  Spanish,  or  more 
properly,  the  Mexican  tongue;  meeting  an  occasional  black 
look,  but  finding  the  people  in  general  very  simple,  kind, 
and  obliging,  and  ready  to  help  out  his  stumbling  phrases. 
Ridgely  had  hardly  exaggerated;  Matamoros  was  boiling  over 
with  Americans  —  and  not  the  most  select  assortment  at  that. 
To  judge  by  the  society  our  army  attracted  and  the  quality 
of  entertainment  provided  for  it,  you  might  have  supposed  it 
was  made  up  of  drunken  rowdies  and  blackguards.  Burke 
went  into  wrhat  appeared  to  be  one  of  the  most  popular  bar 
rooms  of  the  place,  which  flourished  under  the  title  of  "The 
Grand  Spanish  Saloon"  -the  establishment  not  presenting, 
however,  a  single  Spanish  feature.  It  was  a  long,  low-ceil- 


362  NATHAN   BURKE 

inged  room  like  a  tunnel,  its  only  window,  which  was  really  a 
pair  of  glass  double-doors  in  the  usual  Mexican  fashion,  open 
ing  on  an  inner  court,  floored  with  slimy  bricks,  where  some 
potted  plants  sickened  in  the  over-heated  foul  air.  The 
bar  occupied  one  side;  on  the  other  there  were  a  great  num 
ber  of  tables  where  many  gentlemen  of  various  complexions, 
but  an  equal  and  most  astonishing  degree  of  skill,  were  en 
gaged  at  roulette,  faro,  keno,  chuck-a-luck  and  other  ingen 
ious  pastimes.  All  these  practitioners  went  armed,  it  seemed, 
and  seldom  in  his  life  has  Captain  Burke  been  received  with 
more  marked  attention;  he  could  not  approach  a  table  with 
out  some  member  of  the  party  seated  thereat  starting  a  little 
nervously  and  feeling  for  his  weapon!  At  the  back  of  the 
room,  after  having  made  the  tour  of  both  sides,  the  captain 
found,  to  his  unqualified  amazement,  a  coffee-stand  in  charge 
of  a  lean,  quiet-looking  youth  of  eighteen  or  so,  who  was  read 
ing  in  the  corner.  The  stand,  which  was  nothing  more  than  a 
board  across  a  couple  of  barrels,  was  draped  in  red  curtain- 
calico  and  spread  with  clean  white  paper;  there  was  a  tin 
coffee-urn  and  some  plates  of  cakes.  Burke,  wondering 
within  him  who  patronized  this  modest  enterprise  in  such  a 
place,  went  up  and  asked  for  coffee,  and  the  boy  got  up,  set 
the  spirit-lamp  going,  and  served  him  gravely.  He  was 
shabbily  dressed  but  had  a  pair  of  clean  hands,  —  very 
nearly  the  first  Nat  had  seen  in  Mexico,  —  and  the  coffee 
was  hot  and  fairly  good. 

"This  isn't  a  very  good  place  for  a  boy  like  you,  my  lad/' 
said  the  captain  —  who,  being  at  this  time  somewhere  in  the 
neighborhood  of  twenty-five  years  of  age,  and  of  a  sober  char 
acter  and  experience,  was  inclined  sometimes  to  take  himself 
pretty  seriously.  The  other  looked  at  him  with  a  kind  of 
sprite-like  humor,  in  which  there  showed,  too,  both  un 
derstanding  and  good-nature;  he  had  a  thin,  spirited,  and 
singularly  mobile  face. 

"Well,  I  don't  know  that  it's  such  a  very  good  place  for  an 
old  manlike  you,  grandpa,"  he  remarked.  Their  eyes  met; 
and  Nat  had  the  grace  to  burst  out  laughing  —  a  laugh  in 
which  the  boy  joined  whole-heartedly. 

"Well,  but  I  mean  it,"  Burke  persisted.  "How  do  you 
happen  to  be  here  ?  " 

"Business,"  said  the  other,  succinctly,  beginning  to  clear 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE   OLD   ONE    363 

away  the  coffee-cup  and  spoon.     "  We  thought  we'd  get  more 
customers  in  a  place  like  this." 

"  Do  you,  though  ?" 

"I  don't  know  —  I  never  tried  selling  coffee  before,  so  I 
can't  tell  whether  we're  doing  a  roaring  trade,  or  only  just 
keeping  our  heads  above  water,"  said  the  boy,  with  gravity. 
"  I  haven't  anything  to  compare  by,  you  see." 

Here  a  sallow,  black-haired  man  in  black  broadcloth  with 
a  diamond  on  his  little  finger,  another  in  his  shirt-front,  a  silk 
hat,  and  a  pistol  in  his  hip-pocket  —  one  of  the  gamblers,  in 
short,  lounged  forward  and  spun  a  dollar  on  the  counter. 
"Gimme  a  cup  of  coffee,  Joe."  Nathan  sat  down  on  a 
whiskey-keg,  conveniently  near,  and  watched  Joe  serve  out 
the  hot  drink.  "Keep  the  change  —  that's  all  right  —  keep 
it!"  said  his  patron,  magnificently,  and  swaggered  away, 
barely  glancing  at  the  humble  infantry-officer  sitting  by. 
Joe  picked  up  the  dollar,  thoughtfully.  "That  wouldn't 
happen  in  a  respectable  place,  I  suppose,"  he  said,  grinning  a 
little. 

"  You  haven't  always  done  this,  then?  "  Nathan  asked  him. 

"Hey?  Had  a  coffee-stand?  Well,  no,  I  should  think 
not!  "  said  the  other,  with  some  youthful  arrogance.  "I'm  an 
actor." 

"Oh.  Are  you  with  the  company  here  in  town?  The 
ones  that  came  up  the  river  the  other  day  ?  "  said  Burke,  sur 
prised  and  faintly  disappointed.  At  the  time  of  which  I 
write  there  was  a  disposition  in  certain  circles  to  look  with 
disapproval  on  what  we  now  acknowledge  to  be  one  of  the 
noblest  of  professions.  I  am  glad  to  say  that  Mr.  Burke  had 
never  shared  this  absurd  and  stupid  and  cruel  prejudice  ;  but 
he  had  happened  to  see  the  dramatic  troupe  he  mentioned  on 
their  journey,  and  this  boy,  who  was  plainly  too  good  for  his 
present  employment,  should  be  also,  Nat  thought,  too  good 
for  that  miserable  crew,  those  painted,  haggard,  loud 
mouthed  women,  and  coarse  men.  Indeed,  young  Joe 
flushed  a  good  deal,  and  cast  a  troubled  look  at  his  ques 
tioner. 

uNo,  no  —  I  don't  act  with  them.  I'm  here  with  my 
mother  and  sister;  we  —  we  don't  even  know  those  people, " 
he  explained  hastily;  "we've  been  here  for  months  —  came 
from  Galveston  this  Spring.  We  heard  the  guns  at  Palo 


364  NATHAN   BURKE 

Alto  the  very  day  we  got  here,  while  we  were  on  the  steam 
boat  at  Point  Isabel." 

"You  don't  say!  Why,  you  were  here  through  it  all," 
exclaimed  Burke,  interested.  "Gracious!  You  didn't  see 
any  of  the  fighting,  did  you?" 

"Oh,  no.  But  we  saw  Ringgold's  funeral,"  said  the  boy, 
with  enthusiasm;  "  they  had  him  on  one  of  the  gun-carriages 
-what  do  you  call  'em?  —  a  caisson,  isn't  it?  —  with  the 
flag  spread  over  him  and  all  the  soldiers  marching  with  their 
arms  reversed,  and  the  drums  muffled,  and  the  band  going 
soft  —  it  was  solemn  and  awful  —  it  was  a  great  sight!" 
The  dramatic  aspect  of  the  scene,  it  was  evident,  touched  him 
deeply;  his  young  voice  vibrated  as  he  spoke. 

"It's  a  wonder  you  didn't  enlist  on  the  spot,"  said  Burke, 
a  little  amused. 

"Well,  military  funerals  aren't  exactly  an  inducement,  you 
know,"  retorted  the  other,  with  a  slight  yet  curiously  conta 
gious  chuckle;  then  his  face  sobered.  "Besides,  I  can't  leave 
mother,"  he  said  seriously.  "  This  wouldn't  be  any  place  for 
her  and  my  sister  without  me  to  take  care  of  them.  It's  not 
much  of  a  place  for  women  —  American  women  —  anyhow." 

"You've  been  here  ever  since,  then  ?  " 

"Yes  —  oh,  yes.  We  were  acting  in  the  theatre  here,  you 
know.  Then,  here  a  couple  of  weeks  ago,  our  manager 
vamoosed  —  cleared  out  —  with  all  the  receipts,  and  some 
back-salaries.  That  left  us  all—  "  he  spread  his  hands  and 
brought  them  down  on  the  slab  in  front  of  him  with  a  gesture 
in  which  one  saw  a  complete  void,  a  world  of  emptiness  — 
"flat  —  stony  broke  —  "  he  said  with  a  kind  of  airy  tragedy, 
cheerful  and  unafraid.  "No  use  trying  to  get  after  him,  you 
know  —  we  couldn't  have  got  anything  out  of  him,  even  if  we 
could  have  found  him." 

"What  became  of  the  rest  of  your  company?"  Burke 
asked,  not  a  little  entertained  by  this  slight  glimpse  of  the 
players'  world.  Joe  shook  his  head. 

"Don't  know,"  he  said  light-heartedly;  "most  of  'em 
scraped  up  the  money  to  go  —  get  back  to  the  States  some 
how.  One  fellow  stayed,  and  he  and  I  went  into  this  to 
gether  —  firm's  name  is  Badger  and  Jefferson  —  Edward 
Badger  and  Joseph  Jefferson.  We  used  to  do  the  comedy 
parts  together."  He  gave  a  light  sigh,  and  meditatively 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE   OLD   ONE     365 

rearranged  his  cups  and  saucers.  "  Texas  may  be  all  right  for 
a  ranger,"  he  said  profoundly,  "but  I'm  convinced  it's  no 
field  for  the  legitimate." 

"The  legitimate?"  said  Burke,  not  understanding. 

"Yes  —  the  regular  drama.  'Now  is  the  winter  of  our 
discontent  — '  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  Maybe  I'll  have  to 
enlist  yet.  You're  one  of  the  enlisted  men,  the  volunteers,  I 
mean,  aren't  you  ?  Doesn't  that  shoulder-strap,  or  whatever 
you  call  it,  mean  a  captain?" 

"Yes,  my  name's  Burke  of  the  Ohio  Volunteers." 

"Burke?  Is  that  so?  I've  got  a  step-brother  named 
Burke.  He's  an  actor,  too;  he's  in  Philadelphia  now  —  at 
least  that's  the  last  we  heard,"  said  the  boy,  appearing  to  take 
this  wide  distribution  of  the  family  quite  as  a  matter  of 
course.  "None  of  us  come  from  Ohio,  though,  so  I  suppose 
we  can't  be  any  relation." 

Burke,  being  himself  quite  kinless,  said  that  he  was  afraid 
not.  "Where's  your  partner?"  he  added.  "Does  he  leave 
you  to  do  all  the  work  alone  ?  " 

"Oh,  no.  I  guess  he's  —  he's  busy  somewhere,"  said  the 
boy,  sending  —  unconsciously,  I  think  —  a  disturbed  glance 
toward  the  card-tables.  "He  always  turns  up  at  evening 
anyhow,  so  we  can  go  home  together.  He's  got  a  pistol  — 
person  has  to  be  pretty  careful  after  dark  here,  you  know." 

It  was  nearing  dusk  already,  as  Burke  remarked  with  sur 
prise.  And  Badger  not  appearing,  the  captain,  who  carried 
a  patent-repeater  himself,  volunteered  to  convoy  young  Jef 
ferson  home  with  the  "swag,"  as  he  humorously  termed  the 
profits  of  his  day's  labor,  which  he  bestowed  in  a  buckskin 
bag  —  it  did  not  need  a  very  large  one.  This  treasure  he  in 
trusted  to  Mr.  Burke  with  as  much  confidence  as  if  he  had 
known  that  gentleman  all  his  life ;  and  they  set  out  together, 
Joe  himself  bearing  one  of  the  firm's  pies  wrapped  in  a  bit  of 
brown  paper,  for  a  contribution  to  the  evening  meal.  "  We've 
got  an  old  Mexican  woman  that  makes  'em  for  us,"  he  ex 
plained;  "  and  I  guess  they're  clean  —  they  haven't  poisoned 
anybody  yet,  anyway." 

The  Jeffersons  were  living  in  an  humble  quarter  of  the 
town  in  a  Mexican  house  which  must  have  sheltered  half-a- 
dozen  other  families.  Any  number  of  domestic  offices,  from 
plucking  chickens  for  to-morrow's  dinner  to  spanking  re- 


366  NATHAN   BURKE 

calcitrant  babies,  were  going  on  in  the  patio  as  we  entered;  a 
pretty  young  Mexican  girl  who  was  watering  the  plants 
looked  up  with  a  smile  and  flashing  white  teeth,  and  a  rather 
coquettish  side-glance  of  big  black  eyes.  "  That's  Metta  — 
a  —  a  girl  I  know,"  said  young  Jefferson,  reddening  slightly; 
"she  —  she  teaches  me  Spanish."  Captain  Burke  benevo 
lently  repressed  an  impulse  to  ask  what  else  she  taught  him ; 
he  had  a  fellow-feeling  for  the  young  man  —  does  not  all  the 
world  love  a  lover  ?  And  we  went  up  the  stone  steps  leading 
to  the  inner  balcony  around  the  second  floor  of  the  establish 
ment,  which  seems  to  be  a  universal  feature  of  Mexican  archi 
tecture;  and  Jefferson's  mother  came  out  and  welcomed  us 
with  a  manner  so  kind  and  dignified  and  gracious  that  one  of 
us,  who,  to  tell  the  truth,  had  been  wondering  what  an  actress 
would  be  like,  felt  at  once  a  touch  of  shame,  and  a  great  ad 
miration.  Captain  Burke,  who,  since  this  episode,  has 
very  frequently  been  asked  to  describe  Mrs.  Jefferson,  has 
never  been  able  to  say  more  than  that  she  did  not  strike  him 
as  a  noticeably  pretty  woman,  although  it  is  said  she  "made 
up"  (as  they  call  it)  in  a  royally  beautiful  style  on  the  stage, 
where,  however,  he  never  had  the  good  fortune  to  see  her. 
She  had  a  sweet,  tired  face,  a  lovely  voice,  a  great  deal  of 
perfectly  natural  and  spontaneous  grace  in  movement.  I  do 
not  think  the  richest  or  most  exalted  people  in  the  world  could 
have  offered  a  more  charming  hospitality  than  Mrs.  Jefferson 
contrived  with  the  very  little  that  she  had;  and  I  am  afraid 
Mr.  Burke  sat  down  to  their  supper  and  that  famous  pie  with 
scarcely  any  pressing  in  disgraceful  eagerness.  It  was  weeks 
since  the  young  fellow  had  seen  anything  like  an  American 
home,  or  spoken  to  a  woman.  Long  afterwards  his  hostess 
told  him,  with  her  kind  and  gentle  laughter,  that  his  delight 
was  almost  pathetic.  —  "And  really,  General  (it's  general 
now,  isn't  it?),  our  table  was  awful  —  cracked  china,  and 
not  enough  plates  to  go  around,  and  hardly  anything  to 
put  on  the  plates  ! "  Burke  remembered  it  as  one  of  the  best 
meals  he  ever  ate  in  his  life;  and  he  stayed  an  unconscionable 
time  after  it,  talking  to  her  on  the  balcony,  while  the  stars 
came  out  and  looked  down  into  the  little  courtyard,  and 
young  Joseph,  having  stolen  off,  was  whispering  at  his 
sweetheart's  window  —  in  Spanish,  no  doubt  —  somewhere 
below  us. 


SOME   NEW   FRIENDS   AND   ONE  OLD   ONE     367 

The  captain  took  his  way  thence,  intending  to  find  a  berth 
for  himself  in  some  sort  of  rooming-house  in  the  Calle  Gua 
najuato,  which  Ridgely  had  pointed  out  to  him  as  a  likely 
place  earlier  in  the  day.  There  was  still  a  crowd  abroad 
as  he  walked  along  —  in  the  middle  of  the  street,  as  had  been 
enjoined  upon  him.  An  unnecessary  precaution,  Burke 
thought;  the  streets  were  not  much  darker  than  those  at 
home,  where,  as  yet,  there  were  no  gas-lamps,  and  the  people 
no  different  from  those  one  might  have  seen  at  this  hour  in 
certain  quarters  of  his  own  city  —  all  kinds  of  men,  and  one 
kind  of  women.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  got  no  notice,  hostile 
or  otherwise,  from  either,  until,  reaching  a  corner,  he  stood 
still  for  a  second  in  a  little  uncertainty  about  the  right  direc 
tion,  looking  up  and  down.  There  was  a  lamp  bracketed 
against  the  angle  of  the  building  high  up  overhead;  he  re 
membered  afterwards,  with  a  curious  nicety,  the  look  of  the 
plastered  wall  tinted  a  strong  pink,  with  a  barred  window 
surrounded  by  a  make-believe  cornice  and  mouldings  painted 
on  the  flat  surface  like  a  drop-scene  in  a  theatre;  across  the 
narrow  way  there  was  a  pulque-shop,  "El  Sueno  De  Amor" 
daubed  in  flourishing  black  letters  over  the  door.  A  woman 
came  out  from  the  shadows  of  a  near-by  alley,  and  touched 
him  on  the  arm.  She  almost  immediately  shrank  back,  some 
speech  which  she  had  been  beginning  arrested  in  inarticulate 
sound ;  she  shrank  back  against  the  pink  wall,  the  scarf  over 
her  head  fell  down,  she  stared  at  him  with  a  ghastly  face. 
Nathan  looked  at  her,  startled;  he  made  a  step  forward  —  a 
step  back. 

"Nance!"  he  cried  out;  "Nance!" 


CHAPTER  III 

MATAMOROS 

« 

SHE  did  not  answer,  and  for  one  swift  moment  Burke 
fancied  he  must  be  mistaken.  "I  —  I  thought  it  was  —  I 
thought  I  knew  —  "  he  began  to  mumble;  the  words  died  in 
his  throat  in  an  inexpressible  confusion  of  doubt,  wonder, 
reluctant  certainty,  formless  dismay.  She  moved  as  if  to 
put  up  her  hands  before  her  cheeks  —  which  bloomed  with 
a  pitiful  unnatural  red  color  under  the  direct  light  —  then 
let  them  drop  as  suddenly.  " Nance!"  said  Burke  again, 
involuntarily  lowering  his  voice  as  he  gazed  into  her  pallid 
face  —  pallid  with  all  its  mock  roses  —  and  her  great  eyes. 
Merciful  God,  what  feeling  was  it  of  heart-sickening  sus 
picion  and  shame  and  distress  that  prompted  him  to  that 
secrecy  ? 

"I  didn't  know  it  was  you,  Nat,"  she  said  in  an  under 
tone,  too.  She  paused,  perhaps  to  collect  herself,  and  then 
spoke  quite  firmly  and  deliberately:  "I  just  thought  it  was 
an  officer  —  one  of  the  officers,  I  didn't  know  which  one  — 
I  just  saw  it  was  one  of  the  officers  in  the  army." 

"What  do  you  want  with  —  what  are  you  doing  here?" 
said  Nathan,  hoarsely.  The  question  came  unwilled  to  his 
lips;  it  was  so  he  greeted  her  after  all  these  years  ! 

"I  guess  you  know,"  said  Nance.  She  pulled  her  scarf, 
a  cheap  black  lace  thing  affecting  the  Spanish  style,  up  over 
her  head  and  her  black  glossy  hair,  carefully  dressed  with  a 
red  artificial  rose  and  gilt  gewgaws  stuck  amongst  the  braids, 
straightening  the  folds  with  a  kind  of  mechanical  coquetry. 
"If  I'd  thought  quick  enough,  I'd  have  got  away  before  you 
had  a  chance  to  see  who  it  was.  But  I  was  kind  of  taken 
by  surprise.  I  thought  you  was  just  some  one  of  tha  offi 
cers  — 

"Oh,  for  God's  sake,  Nance,  don't  say  that  again  —  don't 
say  it !"  the  young  man  burst  out,  almost  with  a  sob.  The 
cabin,  the  camp-fire,  the  serene  forest,  Darnell  with  his 

368 


MATAMOROS  369 

rifle,  the  girl  in  her  red  cotton  frock  —  old,  old  scenes  and 
memories  rushed  upon  him;  he  felt  a  kind  of  agony  of  weak 
compassion,  miserable  and  helpless  regret.  Of  the  two,  this 
poor  painted,  bedecked,  and  not  penitent  Magdalen  was  by 
far  the  more  composed  —  or,  perhaps,  whatever  her  real 
emotion,  she  concealed  it  with  the  drilled  and  painful  du 
plicity  of  women.  She  looked  at  him  silently  without  either 
embarrassment  or  defiance.  I  suppose  Mrs.  Ducey  would 
have  called  her  utterly  shameless;  yet  no  manner  could  have 
been  less  brazen,  farther  removed  from  what  is  commonly 
figured  as  that  of  the  courtesan.  She  seemed,  after  the  first 
instant,  to  have  accepted  the  situation,  and  to  expect  Burke 
to  accept  it  with  a  like  philosophy.  At  the  time  of  her 
father's  death  she  had  betrayed  something  of  the  same  dis 
torted  fatalism  —  to  call  it  that  —  and  the  girl  of  five  or 
six  years  ago  was  strangely  visible  in  the  woman  of  to-day. 
Whatever  Nance's  faults,  dishonesty  was  not  one  of  them; 
when  Nathan  asked  her  what  she  was  doing,  she  answered 
with  as  much  plainness  of  speech  and  manner  (more,  indeed, 
than  it  has  been  possible  to  convey  here)  as  a  woman  ever 
employs  towards  a  man  —  too  plainly,  at  least,  to  be  misin 
terpreted.  He  had  known  her  since  both  of  them  could 
remember,  a  brother  could  not  have  been  nearer  to  her;  one 
ready  lie  might  have  made  all  smooth,  so  many  men  and 
most  women  would  have  thought  —  and  she  never  thought 
to  utter  it.  The  only  alternative  that  occurred  to  her  was 
that  of  running  away;  and  that  chance  lost,  she  knew  no 
devices  to  spare  herself,  and  asked  for  no  quarter. 

They  stood  looking  at  each  other  for  a  long  minute  in 
silence;  then,  as  she  turned  slowly  away,  Nathan  followed 
her  with  a  gesture.  "Nance,  where  are  you  going?" 

"Home,  I  guess.     Back  where  I  live,  I  mean." 

He  fell  into  step  by  her  side.     "You  are  living  here?" 

"Yes." 

"Where?"  asked  Burke,  aware  of  some  subtle  change  in 
her  manner;  she  began  to  walk  so  hurriedly  he  had  to 
lengthen  his  stride  to  keep  up  with  her.  And  at  the  last 
question  she  hesitated  perceptibly  before  answering:  — 

"  It's  —  it's  up  the  street  —  off  there.     It's  a  good  ways  —  " 

"I'll  go  with  you  —  I  want  to  see  you  -  '  Burke  was 
beginning,  when,  to  his  bewilderment,  she  stopped  short, 

2B 


370  NATHAN   BURKE 

cowering  away  as  if  he  had  offered  to  strike  her.  They  had 
left  the  zone  of  lamplight,  and  he  could  see  her  face  only 
imperfectly  in  the  dusk,  but  there  was  no  mistaking  her 
attitude  of  almost  frenzied  repugnance  and  entreaty.  She 
clasped  and  wrung  her  hands  together,  her  voice  came  in 
a  kind  of  hoarse  shriek.  "Oh,  Nat,  Nat  Burke  —  not  you! 
Oh,  please,  Nathan,  oh,  please  go  away,  oh,  please  go  back  — " 
she  began  to  cry,  with  long  shuddering  gasps  like  a  child. 

"Go  away?"  repeated  Nathan,  puzzled  and  moved  and, 
in  fact,  rather  frightened.  "Why?  What  for?  Don't 
cry  that  way,  Nance,  don't  —  you'll  hurt  yourself.  Do  you 
think  I  care  what  kind  of  a  place  you  live  in  ?  Don't  you 
want  me  to  see  it?  I  —  I  just  wanted  to  know  how  — 
how  it  happened.  If  you'd  rather  not  talk  to  me  —  if 
you'd  rather  I  didn't  know  —  if  it's  too  hard  for  you  to  tell 
me,  you  know  —  I'll  go  away.  Only  you  know  nothing 
you  could  do  or  say  or  —  or  be  could  make  any  difference 
in  the  way  I've  always  felt  about  you  —  you  believe  that, 
don't  you  ?  Lord  Almighty  knows  I'm  not  so  good  I  can 
set  myself  up  to  judge  people!"  said  the  young  fellow,  awk 
wardly  enough,  but  in  all  earnestness  and  humility.  He 
was  afraid  lest  something  he  had  said  or  left  unsaid,  in  the 
pain  and  confusion  of  their  meeting,  might  have  seemed  to 
her  an  assumption  of  the  judge's  attitude  —  than  which 
nothing  could  have  been  farther  from  his  mind.  Let  him 
that  is  without  sin  cast  the  first  stone. 

The  words  seemed  to  quiet  her;  her  sobs  and  ejaculations 
ceased  at  last.  "  I  guess  I'm  kind  of  half  crazy,  Nat,"  she 
said  brokenly;  "  I  might  have  known  you  wouldn't  want  — 
but  I've  —  I've  got  to  thinking  of  that  the  first  thing  —  I 
—  I  can't  help  it,  Nathan.  I've  just  got  into  that  way  of 
thinking.  A  person  does,  you  know  -  *-  a  woman,  I  mean  — 
that  —  that  lives  the  way  I  do.  You  can't  get  away  from 
it  —  it's  just  like  all  the  men  was  brutes  —  and  the  women, 
too,  for  that  matter.  There  don't  seem  to  be  anything  else  — 
only  just  that.  People  don't  know  —  '  and  a  great  deal 
more  in  the  same  incoherent  and  hysterical  strain  which 
Burke  put  down  to  overwrought  nerves  and  a  shattered 
body,  as  he  walked  by  her  side  and  listened  to  her.  He  could 
make  nothing  sensible  out  of  it  at  the  time,  except  that  she 
seemed  to  think  she  must  apologize  for  her  seizure;  and  it 


MATAMOROS  371 

was  not  until  long  afterwards,  in  recalling  this  conversation, 
every  word  of  which  he  will  remember  to  his  dying  day,  that 
comprehension  came  slowly  to  him  —  with  a  wretched  shame 
and  self-abasement  —  of  what  the  poor  thing  meant,  of  what 
she  had  momentarily  supposed  him  capable. 

The  house  where  Nance  lived  was  in  one  of  the  water 
side  streets  —  I  have  forgot  the  name,  if  indeed  I  ever  no 
ticed  it  —  with  another  pulque-shop  under  the  corner, 
"La  Liu  via  de  Oro"  this  time  —  a  name  in  which  one  might 
discern  a  ghastly  appropriateness  —  whence  issued  a  one- 
eyed  and  dreadfully  pock-marked  wretch  who  opened  the 
heavy  wooden  doors  into  the  patio  with  many  leers,  winks, 
and  nods;  and  —  Burke  having  given  him  a  piece  of  money 
for  performing  this  office  —  called  unprintable  good  wishes 
after  the  couple  as  they  ascended  the  stone  steps.  At  the 
stair-head  a  fat  hag,  hanging  over  the  iron  balustrade,  doubt 
less  to  take  stock  of  the  prey  her  foragers  had  brought  in, 
bestowed  a  cataloguing  glance  on  the  officer;  and  presently 
after  a  servant  came  with  champagne  to  the  door  of  the  room. 
There  was  no  lack  of  feasting  and  drinking,  laughter  and 
music,  and  gaudy  decorations  within  those  accursed  walls. 
Nance  told  Burke  she  had  been  there  for  two  weeks.  She 
had  come  with  a  party  of  —  of  actors. 

"What!  You  were  with  those  people?"  Nathan  cried 
out.  "Why,  I  saw  them  —  I  saw  them  pass  in  their  steam 
boat.  I  was  standing  on  the  docks  down  at  Camp  Belknap 
—  down  at  the  river  mouth." 

"I  know,"  said  Nance,  nodding;  "that  was  the  people. 
But  I  didn't  see  you,  Nat.  Maybe  I  was  in  the  cabin.  I 
don't  know  that  I'd  have  known  you  unless  I  was  close  to, 
anyhow.  You  look  a  lot  older,  and  then  being  in  uniform 
changes  a  man's  looks.  I  didn't  know  you  was  with  the 
army.  Them  people  I  was  with,  they  ain't  actors  —  them 
women  ain't  —  there's  pretty  near  all  of  'em  in  this  house 
right  now.  They  ain't  any  more  actors  than  I  am.  We'd 
come  over  from  N'Orleans  because  of  the  army  being  here. 
They  was  two  men  brought  the  lot." 

"Where  had  you  been  before  that?" 

"Why  in  N'Orleans  in  a  —  house  there,  you  know.  Oh, 
you  mean  before  that  f  Why,  I  don't  know  —  everywheres 
I  guess  —  ever  so  many  places  —  I  had,  anyway.  Don't 


372  NATHAN   BURKE 

you  want  some  champagne,  Nathan  ?  Oh,  well,  you  needn't 
to,  then,  if  you  don't  want."  She  put  the  bottle  down  with 
a  miserable  reluctance.  "I  — I  drink  some  —  I  drink  about 
as  much  as  Pap  useter,  Nat,  —  I  —  you  get  to  doing  it, 
you  know  —  you  can't  help  yourself — " 

"  I  understand,"  said  Nat,  unhappily, 

"I  like  the  taste,  though  —  at  least  I  did  to  begin  with. 
You  know  Pap  didn't  care  nothing  about  how  it  tasted. 
But  I  don't  reckon  he'd  ever  drunk  any  champagne.  It 
kind  of  fixes  you  up  when  you  ain't  feeling  good.  And  I 
ain't  feeling  good  a  good  part  of  the  time,  Nathan.  I'm 
tired.  When  you're  that  way,  you've  got  to  have  something. 
It  don't  last,  of  course;  nothing  lasts,  I  guess,"  she  finished 
musingly. 

Burke  thought  with  a  pang  of  sorrowful  apprehension  as  he 
sat  looking  at  her  that  this  dreary  aphorism  might  well 
apply  to  poor  Nance's  own  term  of  days  in  a  world  which 
had  not  treated  her  too  kindly.  She  was  very  thin,  and  as 
he  now  began  to  notice,  coughed  with  a  slight  persistent 
cough ;  her  features  had  sharpened  to  a  kind  of  hard  delicacy, 
there  was  a  hollow  at  either  temple  where  the  blue  vein 
stood  out  distressingly;  in  this  moment  of  repose  she  looked 
quite  old  —  old  and  haggard  —  yet  she  was  a  year  younger 
than  himself.  She  sat  in  a  sibyl-like  attitude  with  her 
black  drapery,  her  white  and  tinted  face,  her  chin  in  one 
hand,  her  gloomy  eyes  fixed  —  alas !  —  on  the  tin-foiled 
bottle  of  wine.  The  lamp  on  the  table  threw  a  dingy  halo 
about  her;  it  could  not  conquer  the  shadows  of  the  high, 
cold,  shabbily  gorgeous  room,  and  Nance's  slender  figure  in 
a  garish  travesty  of  the  Mexican  costume,  all  flaring  colors, 
fringes,  and  paste  jewelry,  made  the  young  man  think  of  the 
last  flame  leaping  red  and  vivid  upon  some  dim  ash-heap. 
A  little  longer  and  that  unstable  fire  would  flicker  out  in  the 
awful  darkness  that  awaits  both  saint  and  sinner. 

"Where  did  you  go,  Nance,  when  you  —  you  went  away 
first,  you  know?"  he  asked.  "I  hunted  for  you  high  and 
low,  as  soon  as  I  heard  about  —  about  what  had  happened. 
But  that  wasn't  till  a  month  afterwards." 

"I  knew  you  was  hunting,  —  knew  it  all  the  time.  I  hid. 
I  didn't  want  you  to  find  me,"  she  answered  apathetically. 

"You  hid?    From  me?" 


MATAMOROS  373 

"Yes,  I  hid.  What  good  would  it  have  done  your  finding 
me  ?  By  that  time,  anyhow  ?  Lots  of  people  could  have 
told  you,  only  they  wouldn't  —  you  might  have  knowed 
they  wouldn't.  They  ain't  any  use  trying  to  find  out  any 
thing  from  'em.  That  old  White-Hat  Sam,  he  could  have 
told  you  for  one.  'Most  everybody  around  where  he  lived 
in  them  houses  —  houses  like  this  —  knew,  but  they  weren't 
going  to  tell.  They  never  tell  anything.  'Twasn't  any  use 
your  asking.  Is  White-Hat  Sam  alive  yet,  Nathan  ?" 

"I  don't  know  whether  he  is  or  not,  the  villain  —  the 
—  old  villain,"  Burke  said,  groaning  out  a  curse  in  his  help 
less  pain  and  anger. 

She  looked  at  him  evidently  surprised.  "Why,  what  are 
you  down  on  poor  old  White-Hat  for  ?  He  was  real  good 
to  me.  Oh,  you  think  he  —  he  led  me  astray,  like  the 
preachers  say  ?  Well,  he  didn't,  Nat;  I  did  it  myself  — " 

"Nance!" 

"I  did  it  myself,  I  tell  you.  Nobody  could  'a'  made  me 
if  I  hadn't  chosen  —  why,  you  know  that,  Nat  Burke.  What 
are  you  looking  so  for  ? "  she  demanded  savagely.  "Are  you 
thinking  about  Pap  ?  Don't  you  s'pose  I've  thought  about 
him  ?  He'd  have  shot  me  with  his  old  gun  that  he's  lying 
buried  with  —  he'd  have  choked  me  to  death  with  his  two 
hands  ruther  than  see  me  this  way  —  in  this  place.  Don't 
you  s'pose  I  know  that  ?  Just  the  same  I  did  it  of  my  own 
free  will  and  accord;  there  ain't  nobody  to  blame  —  that  is  — • 
unless  — "  she  turned  her  eyes,  which  she  had  kept  steadily 
on  the  lamp  during  the  last  part  of  this  speech,  towards  the 
young  man  with  a  movement  of  sudden  violence.  "Na 
than!"  she  said  in  a  voice  of  desperate,  of  heart-rending 
appeal;  "Nathan,  I  never  stole  that  breastpin,  I  never 
stole  it,  I  never  touched  it.  You  believe  that,  don't  you  ? 
Nathan,  I  never  lied  in  my  life.  You  know  I  didn't  take  it, 
you  know  I  didn't  take  it." 

"Why,  of  course,  I  know  you  didn't,  Nance.  I  never 
thought  for  a  minute  that  you  took  it,"  said  Burke,  vigor 
ously. 

She  went  on,  hardly  heeding  him,  with  wild  gestures, 
trembling  all  over  her  poor  weak  frame.  "Why,  what  would 
I  have  wanted  with  it,  a  thing  like  that  ?  I  couldn't  wear 
it  —  I  couldn't  sell  it  —  even  if  I  wasn't  honest  —  just  put 


374  NATHAN   BURKE 

it  that  way  —  just  say  I  wasn't  honest  —  why,  I  still  had 
too  much  sense  to  take  it.  She  might  know  that,  seems  to 
me.  There  was  a  dozen  things  in  the  house  I  could  have 
took  any  time,  if  I'd  wanted  —  if  I'd  been  that  kind.  Why 
didn't  I  take  her  money?  I'd  had  plenty  of  chances.  She 
wouldn't  have  missed  it  as  quick  and  I  could  have  spent 
money."  She  stopped  abruptly,  looking  at  Burke  with  a 
tortured  face.  "I  can't  help  it,  Nat  —  I  get  to  going  over 
and  over  it  that  way  sometimes  when  I'm  by  myself.  I'll 
go  crazy  yet,  I  guess  —  if  I  don't  die  first." 

"  I  know  how  it  was.  I  went  to  Mrs.  Ducey  when  I  heard. 
But  I  couldn't  make  her  think  any  differently.  I  guess  I 
did  more  harm  than  good,"  said  Nat,  sadly.  "I've  often 
wished  since  that  I  had  —  had  gone  to  see  you,  and  —  and 
-  why,  I  might  have  made  it  kind  of  easier  for  you,  Nance, 
I  believe,  knowing  all  about  Mrs.  Ducey  the  way  I  did  — 

"Why,  I  don't  know  what  you  could  have  done,  Nathan," 
said  Nance,  simply;  "person's  got  to  live  their  own  life,  and  get 
along  the  best  they  can,  you  know.  Mrs.  Ducey's  a  good 
enough  woman.  Lord,  I  ain't  holding  it  up  against  her,  what 
she  done  —  except  times  when  I  get  mad  at  her,  thinking  about 
it,  like  I  did  just  now.  'Twasn't  right,  Nat.  'Twasn't  fair. 
But  there!  People  can't  be  any  better  than  they're  smart 
enough  to  be.  It  was  hard  —  it  was  hard.  I  was  just  a  wild 
sort  of  fool  girl,  you  know,  Nathan.  Why,  I  thought  Mrs. 
Ducey  was  just  an  angel  from  heaven  —  I'd  always  been  kind 
of  crazy  about  her.  I  remember  Pap  laughing  at  me  about 
that.  And  it  was  good  of  her,  it  was  a  kind,  good  thing  to 
do  to  take  me  and  try  to  make  something  out  of  me.  She 
could  have  done  it,  she  could  have  done  it,  Nat,  if  she'd  went 
at  it  different  —  I  was  ready  to  lie  down  and  let  her  walk 
over  me.  It's  kind  of  pitiful  to  think  how  I  felt  about  her. 
And  she  was  just  as  kind  to  me  as  she  knew  how —  but,  my 
God,  Nathan  Burke,  that  ain't  no  way  to  be  kind  to  people, 
like  they  was  dogs.  You've  got  to  be  kind  to  'em  like  they 
was  men  and  women.  Soon's  I  found  out  how  it  was,  I 
wanted  to  pay  her  back  for  her  kindness  —  understand  ? 
I'd  have  gone  back  to  the  farm,  or  got  another  job  some- 
wheres,  only  I  wanted  for  her  to  get  some  use  out  of  me,  s'long's 
she  thought  she  was  doing  so  much  for  me  —  I  wanted  to  be 
worth  my  keep  to  her.  Pap  wouldn't  have  had  me  beholden 


MATAMOROS  375 

to  nobody.  Hadn't  been  for  that  I  wouldn't  have  stayed 
after  the  first  two-three  months.  Nathan,  I  done  my 
very  best.  I  worked  hard  —  I  tried  to  do  the  way  she 
wanted  —  I  tried  to  please  her  —  I  couldn't  stand  that  boy 
of  hers  —  I  never  heard  of  anybody  that  could  —  but  I  done 
my  best.  And  Mr.  Ducey  is  a  real  kind  man,  too,  Nat.  I 
guess  you  know  that.  He  ain't  smart,  but  he  means  well. 
He  sorter  stood  up  for  me  'bout  the  breastpin  —  but  it  didn't 
do  any  good."  She  had  to  pause  in  a  paroxysm  of  cough 
ing.  Nathan,  listening,  was  conscious  only  of  pity  when 
I  suppose  the  knowledge  of  what  Nance  had  become,  of  the 
depths  to  which  she  had  fallen  in  spite  of  the  opportunities 
she  had  had  to  rise,  ought  to  have  filled  him  with  horror  and 
aversion.  Not  one  good,  or,  as  the  phrase  goes,  honest 
woman  on  earth  would  have  spoken  to  her  —  would  have 
touched  her  with  a  pair  of  tongs  !  —  much  less  sympathized 
with  her. .  Yet  to  his  perverted  view,  she  was  not  wholly 
blamable,  wholly  corrupt.  She  was  willing;  she  was  rea 
sonable;  she  had  the  root,  at  least,  of  humanity  and  justice, 
he  thought.  And  that  she  plainly  felt  the  disgrace  of  imputed 
theft  so  keenly,  and  the  disgrace  of  her  present  position  not 
at  all,  was  one  of  those  contradictions  which  are  still,  some 
way,  somehow,  perfectly  comprehensible. 

She  went  on,  prompted  by  a  question  now  and  then,  but 
for  the  most  part  talking  with  a  freedom  that  probably 
relieved  her.  After  being  turned  away  from  Governor 
Gwynne's,  she  had  found  another  place  only  to  be  discharged 
again  in  about  a  week's  time.  Her  story  seemed  to  be 
common  property  by  this,  and  dogged  her  unerringly.  It 
was  the  kitchen-and-backstairs-gossip  of  the  whole  town. 
"Them  things  get  around  like  everything,  Nat,"  she  said, 
without  any  show  of  anger  or  resentment,  however;  rather 
as  stating  a  curious  and  noteworthy  fact.  "I  reckon  Mrs. 
Ducey  thought  she  never  told  anybody  —  I  guess  she  didn't 
mean  to  —  but  it's  awful  easy  for  stories  like  that  to  get 
started  and  keep  going  and  getting  worse  as  they  go.  All 
them  servants  at  Gwynne's  knew,  and  of  course  they  told 
their  friends  and  they  told  —  and  so  it  went.  "Nance 
Darnell  ?  Why,  she's  the  girl  that  stole  a  lady's  breastpin, 
or  diamond  necklace,  or  trunkful  of  gold  dollars,  or  Lord 
knows  what!"  One  place  the  lady  said  she'd  heard  'bout  me 


376  NATHAN   BURKE 

stealing  that  solid  silver  tea-service,  and  she  was  surprised 
my  showing  my  face  in  an  honest  person's  house.  The  last 
place  I  was  in  -  -  'twas  a  boarding-house  —  was  kep'  by  a 
big,  fat  woman  with  an  awful  tongue,  but  she  was  kinder 
than  some.  I  stayed  there  a  little  longer  than  at  most  all 
of  the  other  places.  She  came  in  the  kitchen  the  second 
day  I  was  there,  and  when  she  got  a  chanst,  when  there 
wasn't  nobody  else  round,  she  says,  kind  of  looking  at  me 
hard :  '  Ain't  you  the  Darnell  girl  that  there's  such  a  rowdy- 
dow  about  ?'  I  said,  'Yes,  I  am.'  She  sort  of  waited  for  a 
minute  and  when  I  didn't  say  anything,  she  says:  'Well, 
speak  up,  can't  you  ?  What  have  you  got  to  say  ? '  I  said, 
'I  ain't  got  anything  to  say,  Mrs.  Doane;  I'll  leave  just  as 
soon  as  I  get  these  dishes  washed  up.'  'I  didn't  say  for  you 
to  go,'  she  says,  still  just  as  rough  as  could  be.  'I  want  you 
to  tell  me  'bout  it.  I  don't  b'lieve  all  the  stories  I  hear 
passed  around, 'she  says.  'Seems  to  me  they  make  out  like 
you  done  too  much.  If  you  was  as  bad  as  they  say,  you'd 
'a'  been  in  the  Pen  long  ago.  Now  you  tell  me  your  side.' 
So  I  told  her.  She  sat  and  studied  awhile,  then  she  says: 
'Well,  Nance,  I  guess  you  can  stay  here.  I  guess  I'll  risk 
you.'  Nathan,  I  done  what  I  never  done  before,  and  I  ain't 
hardly  ever  done  since,  but  when  she  said  that,  I  begun  to 
cry.  She  was  real  good,  that  woman  was. 

"All  the  same,  Nat,  you  know  it  wouldn't  do  —  you  know 
how  things  are.  In  a  little  the  boarders  got  to  knowing 
about  me,  and  then  every  time  one  of  'em  missed  a  shoe- 
button  —  don't  you  see  ?  Mrs.  Doane  come  and  told  me 
herself,  and  she  felt  bad  because  she  —  she  believed  in  me, 
and  she  wanted  to  help  me.  'But  Nance,'  she  says,  "tain't 
any  use.  If  any  of  'em  should  lose  something,  they'd  blame 
it  on  you  right  off.  They'd  say  you  took  it  if  it  couldn't 
be  found;  and  if  it  was  found,  they'd  say  you  put  it  back 
because  you  was  scairt.  I  can't  help  it  —  I  got  to  let  you 
go  —  I  hate  to — it's  a  dog-mean  thing  to  do  —  but  it's  my 
bread-and-butter,  you  know.  I've  got  to  live,  and  I  got  to 
keep  this  boarding-house,  and  I  can't  have  the  people  feel 
ing  that  way.  But,'  she  says,'  I'm  going  to  give  you  a  letter 
to  a  friend  of  mine  that  lives  over  to  Newark,  and  she'll 
take  you  in  and  give  you  a  place  in  her  house,  and  nobody 
knows  anything  about  you  over  there,  nor  they  don't  need 


MATAMOROS  377 

to  know!'  She  give  me  a  dollar,  too,  Nat,  when  I  went 
away.  And  she  didn't  have  much  either,  pore  woman  — 
it's  a  dog's  life,  keeping  boarders." 

Nance  paused  again;  and  a  great  gust  of  laughter,  men's 
and  women's  voices  together,  the  screaking  of  a  fiddle,  and 
a  dog  yelping  in  a  melancholy  cadence  at  some  door  not 
far  distant,  broke  in  upon  them.  Burke  doubted  if  his  com 
panion  heard  it;  she  sat  silent  for  so  long  even  after  the 
noise  had  died  down  that  he  at  last  said,  "So  then  you  went 
to  Newark?" 

She  started,  looked  at  him  with  a  vague  smile,  and  shook 
her  head.  "No,  I  didn't  go,  Nat.  I  could  'a'  gone,  of  course; 
and  mebbe  I'd  'a'  got  into  some  good  people's  home  — 
mebbe.  You  can't  tell.  Mebbe  it  would  have  been  the 
same  thing  over  again,  I  didn't  feel's  if  I  could  stand  any 
more  of  that.  I  was  tired-like.  There  ain't  much  a  girl 
can  do  with  a  thing  like  that  sort  of  hanging  over  her  the 
everlasting  time,  you  know.  You  can't  get  away  from  it 
if  you're  a  girl  like  a  man  can.  Man  can  pick  up  and  go 
anywheres  a  thousand  mile  off  —  yes,  you  could  go  barefoot, 
and  sleep  in  a  haystack,  and  work  your  way  on  a  keel-boat, 
and  nobody  wouldn't  think  anything  of  it,  nor  pay  no  'ten- 
tion  to  how  you  did.  But  a  girl  all  alone  —  first  thing  folks 
want  to  know  is  who  is  she,  and  where'd  she  come  from  and 
what  was  she  doing  the  last  place  she  was  at  ?  Seems  funny, 
a  girl  can't  begin  to  do  half  the  harm  a  man  can,  and 
people  are  ever  so  much  more  scared  of  her  !  I  said  thanky 
to  Mrs.  Doane,  and  I  went  away  and  I  ain't  never  seen  her 
since.  I  s'pose  she  thinks  I  wasn't  any  good  after  all,  an' 
a  thief  spite  of  everything  I  tried  to  make  her  b'lieve. 

"At  first  I  wasn't  quite  certain  but  what  I'd  go  to  New 
ark.  Only  I'd  had  to  walk,  you  know,  because  I  didn't 
have  no  money  for  to  hire  a  seat  in  the  coach;  and  Newark's 
a  good  piece  off,  sixty  or  seventy  mile  I  reckon.  I  remember 
it  was  kind  of  freezin'  weather  with  slush  on  top  of  the  ice 
—  'twas  in  January.  I  remember  thinking  'bout  how  it 
was  getting  along  towards  Miss  Gwynne's  wedding-day; 
I'd  heard  'em  say  how  she  was  to  be  married  sometime  in 
January.  'Twasn't  extra  good  weather  for  a  bride.  I 
walked  around  a  good  while  kind  of  planning  and  studying 
'bout  Newark  —  I  had  to  walk  the  street,  you  know  —  I 


378  NATHAN    BURKE 

didn't  have  nowhere  to  go.  They  was  a  place  I'd  gone  to 
before  in  between  whiles  when  I  didn't  have  a  job,  but  the 
woman  she  told  me  she  didn't  have  no  room  for  me  this  time, 
and  I  knew  'twas  because  she'd  heard,  and  she  didn't  keer 
for  to  have  me  in  the  house.  She  knew  my  name  —  I  never 
lied  to  anybody  'bout  it.  I  just  walked  'round.  Some 
times  I'd  go  into  a  store  and  set  by  the  stove  and  warm  my 
self  for  a  spell;  but  I  didn't  like  to  much,  because  I  didn't 
have  but  a  dollar-seventy-five  —  my  wages  and  what  Mrs. 
Doane  give  me  —  and  I  couldn't  buy  anything,  and  the 
young  men  they  had  clerking  would  come  and  ask  me  what 
I  wanted,  and  when  I  said  I  didn't  want  nothing,  they'd  look 
kind  of  queer.  And  I  got  a  notion  mebbe  some  of  'em  knew 
'bout  me.  If  they  did,  they'd  be  scairt  I'd  take  something, 
and  I  thought  they  watched  me  pretty  close.  Seems  like 
I  must  V  walked  miles  and  miles  that  day  —  pretty  nigh 
enough  to  get  me  to  Newark,  if  I'd  started  that  way,  I 
wouldn't  wonder.  Then  first  you  know  it  come  dark  —  the 
days  is  awful  short,  you  know,  in  winter  —  and  there  I  was, 
and  all  to  oncet  I  remembered  I  hadn't  et  nothing  since 
morning.  I'd  been  thinking  so  hard  I  hadn't  noticed  where 
I  was  going,  but  when  I  looked  up  'twas  Water  Street.  It's 
a  quiet-looking  street  in  day-time,  you  know.  I  set  down 
on  a  doorstep." 

"You  didn't  know  what  kind  of  a — " 

"Yes,  I  did,  Nathan,"  she  said  patiently;  "I  told  you 
before  —  I  knew  all  about  what  I  was  doing.  I  knew  j  ust  what 
kind  of  a  name  the  street  had.  I  was  plumb  tired  out,  and 
it  was  dark  —  blind-man's  holiday,  you  know  —  so's  nobody 
could  see  me  very  well,  and  if  they  did,  what  difference  would 
it  make  ?  Them  people  wouldn't  care,  nor  me  neither.  I 
set  there,  and  I  b'lieve  I  must  have  dozed  off,  for  all  to  oncet 
I  felt  somebody  take  me  by  the  shoulder  and  give  me  a  shake, 
only  not  rough,  you  know,  just  a  right  smart  shake  to  wake 
me  up,  and  says:  'Say, what  you  doing  here?  What's  the 
matter  of  you  ?  Get  up  ! '  When  I  got  good  and  waked  up, 
I  see  it  was  a  woman,  all  dressed  to  kill,  with  a  bunnit  on  with 
feathers,  and  a  long  gold  chain  and  watch,  and  a  fur  cape  and 
muff  —  sables,  they  was  —  and  a  laylock-colored  silk  dress; 
she  was  painted,  too;  I  could  see  her  face  because  somebody 
had  opened  the  door,  and  the  hall-lamp  was  lit  and  shining 


MATAMOROS  379 

straight  on  her.  She  wasn't  very  young  —  she  had  a  false 
front.  They  was  elegant  chairs  and  things  in  the  hall,  too. 
I  said,  '  Ma'am,  was  I  asleep  ? '  sort  of  dumb  like.  For  a 
minute  I  couldn't  remember  where  I  was.  'Asleep  !'  she 
says;  'well,  I  reckon  you  was,  and  sound  too.  Y'ain't 
drunk.  What  you  setting  there  for?  You  don't  b'long 
here.'  I  ast  her  if  it  was  her  house.  She  says:  'Yes,  it's 
mine.  Who  you  looking  for?'  'Nobody,'!  says;  'I  ain't 
got  anywhere  to  go,  that's  all,  so  I  just  set  down  on  your  step 
for  to  rest.  I  didn't  know  whose  house  it  was.  I  didn't 
mean  to  go  to  sleep.'  'Well,  I  should  hope  not,'  says  the 
woman.  '  You'd  'a'  froze  to  death  in  an  hour  or  so.  What 
you  mean  by  you  ain't  got  anywhere  to  go  ?  Where's  your 
folks  ? '  I  told  her  I  didn't  have  none.  '  My  God,  you  ain't 
got  anybody  f '  she  says.  And  then  kinder  sudden :  '  Here,  turn 
'round  to  the  light.  Let's  look  at  you!'  They  was  two-three 
more  women  some  of  'em  dressed  up  and  some  in  frowsy 
double-gowns  come  out  of  the  doors  into  the  hall,  and  looking 
and  listening  by  that  time.  She  looked  at  me  for  a  spell,  and 
then  says :  '  You're  a  right  nice-looking  girl,  my  dear,  to  be 
out  like  this,  lying  'round  on  doorsteps  in  the  cold.  Where's 
your  friend,  you  know?  Mebbe  I  know  him.'  I  said,  'I 
ain't  got  any  friend,  ma'am.'  She  kinder  laughed,  and  said: 
'Oh,  I  know  all  about  that.  I  mean  your  gentleman  friend, 
you  know.  Was  you  looking  for  him?  I  know  a  lot  of  gentle 
men,  and  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  I've  met  him.  What's  his 
name?  You  needn't  be  afraid  of  me,  my  dear.'  I  kept  on 
saying  I  hadn't  any  friend  like  that,  so  at  last  she  said: 
'Well,  never  mind,  if  you  don't  want  to  tell.  You  can  just 
come  inside  anyhow,  and  get  warm.'  So  I  went  in." 

Nance  stopped;  she  got  up  to  adjust  the  lamp  which  had 
begun  to  smoke,  and  resumed  her  seat,  absently  stroking 
down  the  folds  of  her  skirt.  She  raised  her  eyes  and  met  the 
young  man's  expectant  face  with  a  shadowy  surprise,  and 
then  comprehension. 

"I  went  in,  Nat,"  she  repeated  with  a  kind  of  gentle  dis 
tinctness.  "That's  all.  There  ain't  any  more  to  tell.  I 
went  in." 

There  was  another  very  long  silence. 

"They  hounded  you  out  of  their  houses.  And  you  were 
cold  and  starving,"  Burke  contrived  to  say  at  last.  She 
made  a  slight  negative  gesture. 


380  NATHAN   BURKE 

"You  want  to  make  out  like  I  couldn't  help  it.  But  no 
body  made  me  do  it  —  I  done  it  myself,  just  like  I've  been 
telling  you.  I  was  cold  and  hungry,  but  I  guess  I  could  'a' 
made  out  a  little  longer,  only  —  the  other  was  easier,  I  'spose. 
It's  kinder  hard  for  you  to  understand,  I  guess,  Nathan,  but 
-  why,  women  ain't  near  so  good  as  men  think  they  are,  nor 
as  they  think  they  are  theirselves.  Women  like  Mrs.  Ducey 
now,  they  just  don't  want  to  know  'bout  'emselves  right  deep 
down  —  they'd  be  as  mad  as  fury  if  anybody  told  'em  the 
truth.  But  it's  this  way  'bout  men  and  women :  a  man's  got 
to  work  or  die  —  that's  all  there  is  about  it.  But  a  woman 
down  in  the  bottom  of  her  heart  she's  always  thinking  —  yes, 
even  if  she  don't  know  it,  she's  thinking  just  the  same  — 
1  Well,  if  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  there's  always  a  way 
for  me!'  If  you're  Mrs.  Ducey's  kind,  you  just  marry 
somebody;  if  you  ain't  —  if  you're  like  me,  why  — .  There 
it  is.  And  as  for  being  wrong,  that  never  stopped  'em  yet. 
It's  what  people  will  think  and  the  way  they  may  get  treated 
stops  'em.  There  wasn't  anybody  on  earth  caring  for 
me,  and  that  made  it  easier  still  —  but  I  might  'a'  done  it 
anyhow.  Only  I  didn't  want  you  to  know,  Nat;  I  hoped 
you'd  never  know." 

"I  don't  see  why  you  didn't  come  to  me  to  begin  with." 

She  looked  at  him  with  an  expression  that  strikingly  re 
produced  that  which  he  had  seen  on  a  dozen  other  female 
faces  whenever  he  had  attempted  to  explain  his  interest  in 
Nance  Darnell.  "That  wouldn't  have  done  any  good,  Na 
than.  Can't  you  see  that  ?  It  don't  do  any  good  for  a  girl  to 
go  to  a  young  man  when  she's  in  trouble  —  it  only  makes  it 
worse.  And  you  couldn't  have  persuaded  Mrs.  Ducey  any 
different,  anyhow.  You  said  that  yourself." 

"Well,  I  can  help  you  now  surely,  Nance,"  said  Burke, 
earnestly.  "Look  here,  I've  —  I've  got  plenty  of  money, 
you  know.  I've  done  pretty  well.  And  I'm  just  the  same 
as  your  brother.  You'd  take  it  from  me,  wouldn't  you  ?  I 
want  you  to  get  out  of  this  place.  You  can  go  somewhere, 
and  —  and  live  quietly,  and  nobody  need  ever  know  anything 
about  your  —  your  life.  We'll  find  some  little  quiet  place 
—  something  nice  that  you'll  like,  and  —  and  you  can  have 
everything  you  want,  and  —  and  —  and  —  " 

"And  keep  straight?"  said  Nance.     She  eyed  him  with  a 


MATAMOROS  381 

wistful  smile  in  which  there  was  something  almost  maternally 
affectionate  and  forbearing.  "  It's  good  of  you  to  think  of  that, 
Nathan  —  it's  just  like  you  —  it's  good  of  you.  And  I  don't 
believe  you've  got  such  a  power  of  money  either,"  she  inter 
polated  acutely.  "But  you  can't  do  it  —  you  can't  take 
care  of  me." 

"Why  can't  I?" 

"Because  of  what  people  would  say,  that's  why.  S'pose 
anybody'd  seen  you  with  me,  or  coming  in  here  ?  What'd 
they  think?" 

"They  could  say  and  think  what  they  pleased,"  said  Burke, 
impatiently.  "I  guess  I  can  stand  it.  Do  let  me,  Nance. 
Let  me  for  my  own  sake.  It  would  make  me  kind  of  square 
with  myself.  I've  always  felt  as  if  I  hadn't  acted  right  — 
as  if  I  hadn't  done  all  I  could  for  you.  And  I  promised  your 
father  I'd  take  care  of  you.  It's  just  as  if  you  were  my 
sister  —  I  wouldn't  be  ashamed  to  be  seen  anywhere  with 
you,  Nance.  You  believe  that,  don't  you?" 

He  spoke  with  warmth,  and,  as  he  believed,  honestly. 
Nance  did  not  answer  for  a  moment;  then  she  said,  irrele 
vantly,  "Are  you  married,  Nat?" 

"N-no,"  said  the  young  fellow,  startled,  and  feeling  the 
color  rise  in  his  face.  She  turned  her  searching  gaze  on  him. 

"Engaged?  Yes?  To  one  of  those  girls  at  home  ?  Which 
one?  What's  her  name?" 

Burke  stammered  in  a  hideous  confusion;  his  face  was  on 
fire;  he  could  not  meet  her  steady  black  eyes,  he  could  not 
look  at  her.  He  thought  he  would  have  given  a  year  out  of 
his  life  to  have  been  able  to  force  himself  to  the  words;  but 
he  could  not.  His  head  sank  down  on  his  breast,  as  he  called 
himself  inwardly  a  coward  and  a  brute. 

"You  see,"  said  Nance,  in  a  final  tone,  "you  can't  even 
make  yourself  say  her  name  in  this  house  —  in  this  room  — 
to  me.  You  can't  do  it.  That's  the  way  a  man  feels  about 
his  wife  and  his  sister,  Nat." 

"Nance  — I— I  —  " 

"That's  what  your  not  being  ashamed  and  not  caring 
amounts  to,  you  see,"  said  Nance  —  not  at  all  reproachfully, 
but  with  that  same  air  of  detached  and  impersonal  observa 
tion  which,  except  in  a  rare  moment  or  two  of  excitement, 
she  had  maintained  throughout  this  interview. 


382  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Nance!"  said  Burke,  miserably;  "I  — oh,  forgive  me  — 
I  -  "he  fairly  put  his  face  in  his  hands;  he  could  have  shed 
tears  of  shame  and  pain  and  helpless  anger  at  himself. 

"Why,  Lord,  I'm  not  blaming  you,  Nathan.  Don't  feel 
so  bad.  You  meant  it  when  you  said  it,  only  you  didn't 
stop  to  think.  And  you  want  to  do  for  me.  But  I  can't 
go  back  and  be  a  —  a  —  be  like  I  was;  no  more  can  you 
feel  'bout  me  's  if  I'd  always  been  —  kept  straight.  'Tain't 
in  natur'.  You  couldn't  even  me  up  with  your  wife  —  you 
couldn't  let  your  wife  know  anything  'bout  me.  You  think 
you  wouldn't  mind  for  anybody  to  know  that  you  was  tak 
ing  care  of  me  —  but  would  you  tell  anybody  ?  You  might 
swear  yourself  black  in  the  face,  and  would  anybody  believe 
you  that  it  was  —  it  was  all  right?  I  ain't  going  to  spoil 
your  life  that  way,  Nat  —  I  won't  let  you  spoil  it." 

It  was  not  easy  to  move  her  from  this  position;  and  strange 
now  to  Burke  to  reflect  that  a  character  so  strong  or,  at  least 
so  decided,  should  ever  have  committed  so  sadly  irremediable 
an  error;  and,  having  committed  it  and  entered  upon  the 
dark  Avernian  way,  should  still  possess  something  of  its 
ancient  force,  undefined  and  unweakened.  Yet  Burke  did 
not  leave  her  until  he  had  partially  at  any  rate  won  his  point  ; 
he  made  her  take  enough  money  to  provide  for  her  actual 
wants  —  more  she  absolutely  refused  —  and  wrung  a  prom 
ise  from  her  to  see  him  within  a  few  days  when  he  hoped 
to  get  leave  to  visit  Matamoros  again.  Day  was  breaking 
as  he  left  the  place;  the  dogs  were  slinking  away  from  the 
offal-heaps;  there  were  natives  stirring  about  the  streets 
with  their  blankets  up  about  their  eyes,  with  their  sandalled 
feet.  He  found  the  house  in  the  Calle  Guanajuato  where 
the  porter  had  already  unbarred  the  doors;  and  rolled  up  in 
his  soldier's  overcoat  and  slept  on  a  bench  for  an  hour  until 
the  reveille,  sounding  far  and  sweet  across  the  river  at  Fort 
Brown,  awoke  him. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ALARUMS.    EXCURSIONS 

ALL  the  while  that  Captain  Burke's  small  affairs  were 
being  transacted,  and  while  our  gradually  increasing  army 
lay  at  the  Brazos,  at  Camp  Belknap,  at  Burito,  sweltering 
and  shivering  by  turns,  bragging,  squabbling,  drilling,  sky 
larking,  contracting  dysentery,  camp-fever,  and  a  dozen  other 
ills  —  making  trial,  in  a  word,  of  the  pleasures  and  hard 
ships  incident  to  the  paths  of  glory  —  all  this  while  history 
was  marching  forward,  and  those  tolerably  weighty  events 
were  coming  to  pass  which  you  may  read  about  to-day,  set 
forth  in  a  single  short  paragraph  of  Johnny's  school-book. 
The  young  gentleman  himself  considers  it  pretty  dull  stuff, 
I  dare  say;  although  he  is  a  well-meaning  boy,  he  can  hardly 
keep  awake  to  memorize  it.  I  never  yet  fell  in  with  a  pupil 
of  any  grade  from  Primary  up  to  the  closing  year  of  High 
School  who  knew  a  thing  in  the  world  about  the  Mexican 
War,  or,  to  tell  the  dismal  truth,  cared.  Why  should  they  ? 
The  most  of  us  took  very  little  interest  in  our  adversary, 
and  felt  no  slightest  enmity  towards  him,  even  in  the  heat  of 
the  quarrel.  It  is  all  over  these  forty  years ;  we  have  forgot 
it  in  the  stress  of  our  own  private  troubles.  The  widows 
and  orphans  of  '46-'47  have  passed,  or  are  passing  with  their 
generation;  the  battlefields  are  grown  up  in  "chaparral," 
for  what  I  know.  We  have  made  friends  with  the  Republic 
across  the  Rio  Grande,  and  it  is  a  good  thing  to  wipe  the  slate 
clean.  Even  General  Burke  (Bvt.),  who  prides  himself  on  a 
ready  and  accurate  memory,  and  who  thought  he  could 
recall  in  detail  everything  of  importance  that  took  place 
during  those  years,  was  astonished  to  find,  upon  taking  up 
our  little  fellow's  book  the  other  day,  how  far  astray  were 
his  vaunted  recollections.  Such  is  a  young  man's  absorp 
tion  in  his  own  personal  concerns,  that  while,  as  has  been 
seen,  Burke  remembers  most  vividly  and  faithfully  what 

383 


384  NATHAN   BURKE 

happened  under  his  own  eye  and  touched  him  nearly,  he  is 
quite  incapable  of  a  general  view,  as  one  might  call  it,  of 
the  great  events  of  the  day.  For  an  excuse  it  ought  to  be 
noted  that  the  news  we  got  in  camp,  whether  full  or  scanty, 
was  alike  perfectly  unreliable  and  contradictory,  now  for 
peace,  now  for  war,  now  bloody  and  terrible,  now  merely 
inane.  A  score  of  armies  of  our  size  could  not  have  per 
formed  the  manoeuvres  General  Taylor  was  credited  with 
projecting;  nor  could  a  score  of  General  Taylors  have  been 
in  the  different  places  he  was  supposed  to  be,  or  said  the 
different  things  fathered  upon  him.  We  wearied  of  this 
mad  gossip;  we  cared  more  about  letters  from  home  than 
for  the  whole  tribe  of  Presidents,  Cabinets,  and  Generals.1 
Supposing  Ampudia  were  advancing  from  Monterey  to  over 
whelm  us  ?  The  report  might  or  might  not  be  true  —  we 
knew  for  a  certainty  that  the  baby  had  cut  a  tooth.  Say 
we  were  to  march  on  Monterey  to-morrow  —  and  what  of 
that  ?  The  south  field  had  yielded  thirty  bushels  to  the 
acre,  by  thunder  !  It  was  towards  the  end  of  August,  I 
think,  that  we  got  the  news  —  true  for  once !  —  of  another 
revolution  in  that  unfortunate  country  we  were  come  to 
conquer.  Paredes  was  a  prisoner;  Gomez  Farias  had  been 
declared  provisional  president;  Santa  Anna  was  again  at  the 
head  of  the  army.  Santa  Anna!  Maybe  we'd  have  some 
fighting  now!  Men,  remember  the  Alamo !  Captain  Burke 
was  not  one-half  so  interested  in  this  report  as  in  the  dire 
fact  that  our  mail  from  the  States  had  been  lost,  or  the 
carriers  attacked,  robbed,  and  murdered  on  the  road. 

Before  and  during  the  five  or  six  weeks  when  the  volun 
teers  were  arriving,  some  detachments  of  regular  troops  under 
Colonel  Garland,  Lieutenant-colonel  Wilson,  and  others  had 
advanced  up  the  river  and  into  the  country;  and  were  now 
occupying  the  Mexican  towns  of  Reynosa,  Mier,  Camargo, 
and  various  scattered  outposts  which  had  been  surrendered 
to  them  with  little  or  no  resistance.  Many  times,  it  was 
said,  the  village  would  clear  out,  bag  and  baggage,  officers 
and  men,  padre,  alcalde,  citizens,  dogs,  and  donkeys,  upon 

1 1  remember  being  told  in  this  connection  by  the  officer  in  charge 
of  our  regimental  mail  that  fully  nine- tenths  of  the  men's  letters 
were  addressed  to  women.  —  N.  B. 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  385 

our  approach  —  a  proceeding  which  naturally  increased  that 
feeling  of  contempt  which  already  filled  the  breast  of  every 
right-minded  volunteer.  Perhaps  the  regulars  could  have 
corrected  some  of  our  notions;  but  these  gentry  came  and 
went  with  an  air  of  attending  strictly  to  their  own  business, 
seldom  foregathering  with  the  militia,  and  evidently  in  ex 
pectation  that  the  brunt  of  the  fighting  would  fall  to  them  — 
as,  indeed,  in  some  instances  it  did.  I  have  seen  a  hard, 
silent,  experienced  old  sergeant  —  who,  by-the-way,  kept  his 
accoutrements  in  better  order,  his  quarters  cleaner,  and  him 
self  infinitely  more  comfortable  than  the  smartest  of  our 
volunteers,  without  nearly  so  much  trouble  —  I  have  seen 
one  of  these  standing  by  or  lounging  on  a  bench,  listening  with 
something  like  a  smile  on  his  leathery  old  countenance  to  a 
squad  of  lads,  the  Arkansas,  Pennsylvania,  or  Kentucky 
Infantry,  very  likely,  mowing  down  whole  regiments  of  Mexi 
cans  in  prospective,  enacting  prodigies  of  valor,  and  "  conquer 
ing  a  peace" — which  was  the  catchword  of  those  days  — 
with  hardly  a  blow  from  the  other  side.  "Don't  the  Mexi 
cans  ever  fight  ?"  Burke  one  day  asked  a  veteran  of  this  class. 
He  saluted,  "Yes,  sir,"  he  said  —  and  that  was  all  he  said. 
Lieutenant  Ridgely  (being  pressed)  had  been  overheard  to 
admit  that  it  was  "pretty  hot"  at  Palo  Alto;  and  someone 
told  Burke  that  the  "Garda  Costa"  battalion,  recruited  at 
Tampico,  had  fought  "  like  devils,"  and  out  of  their  whole 
number,  two  hundred  and  fifty,  had  left  two  hundred  on  the 
field.  Nevertheless,  amongst  the  thousand-and-one  rumors 
that  sped  about  the  camp,  the  only  one  that  never  gained 
credence  was  that  which  attributed  a  particle  of  courage  and 
spirit  to  our  enemy. 

Lieutenant  Ducey,  a  prodigious  fire-eater,  as  we  have  seen, 
never  lost  an  opportunity  of  expressing  his  impatience  to  be 
on  the  move  against  these  poltroons;  it  would  have  been  a 
war  of  extermination  if  George  had  had  his  way;  and  I  be 
lieve  he  considered  our  general's  just  and  merciful  policy 
towards  the  natives  as  a  mere  exhibition  of  the  latent  weak 
ness  of  Taylor's  character.  "  Perfectly  absurd,  Burke,  perfect 
Tom-foolishness,  this  pampering  of  the  Mexicans,  and  effort 
to  conciliate  them  —  '  order  .  .  .  all  his  command  to  observe 
with  the  most  scrupulous  respect  the  rights  of  the  inhabitants 
who  may  be  found  in  peaceful  prosecution  of  their  occupa- 
2c 


386  NATHAN   BURKE 

tions' —  and  all  the  rest  of  it,"  said  George,  quoting  from 
those  famous  field  orders  of  the  general's,  with  high  scorn  and 
indignation.  "  Aren't  we  in  a  conquered  country,  I'd  like 
to  know — " 

"Not  quite  conquered  yet,  George,"  said  Burke,  with  a 
laugh,  as  he  stropped  his  razor. 

"Pooh,  just  as  good  as  conquered.  Rights,  hey?  These 
people  haven't  any  rights  —  any  that  civilized  warfare  would 
take  any  notice  of,  anyway.  They  aren't  fit  for  rights  — 
they  couldn't  run  the  government  to  save  'em.  And  here's 
another  place  where  he  says:  'Whatever  may  be  needed  for 
the  use  of  the  army  will  be  bought  .  .  .  and  paid  for  at  the 
highest  prices.'  The  idea  of  having  that  printed  in  Spanish 
and  English  and  circulating  it  all  over  the  country  !  It 
fairly  offers  a  prize  to  the  Mexican  who  can  stick  us  for  the 
most  money.  Why,  Taylor  don't  seem  to  know  the  first 
thing  about  war  !  He  ought  to  subsist  the  army  by  foraging; 
he  ought  just  to  take  what  he  wants  wherever  he  can  find  it. 
That's  the  way  to  carry  on  war.  And  that's  what  Secretary 
Marcy  wants  him  to  do  anyhow;  the  War  Department's 
told  him  so  over  and  over  again  —  don't  do  any  good,  he  just 
bulls  right  ahead  his  own  way.  It's  my  opinion  Taylor's  not 
the  brightest  man  in  the  world,  Burke,  not  —  not  a  heavy 
weight,  you  know.  He's  throwing  away  Uncle  Sam's  money, 
that's  what  he's  doing  —  spending  money  that  ain't  his,  by 
jingo!  I've  got  my  opinion  about  any  man  that'll  do  that!" 
said  the  severe  George,  who  certainly  could  not  be  accused  of 
encouraging  the  Mexicans  in  their  extortionate  practices 
by  any  particular  free-handedness  on  his  own  part.  As 
usual  it  was  impossible  to  say  what  became  of  George's 
money,  yet  he  was  chronically  out  of  pocket  and  in  debt. 
And  he  now  added,  after  a  moment  of  silence  in  which  he  sat 
on  the  edge  of  Burke's  camp-cot,  watching  the  latter  gentle 
man  shave  himself  by  a  little  tin-like  mirror  suspended  from 
the  ridge-pole  of  the  tent,  "Say,  you  got  any  money,  Nat  ?" 

"I  guess  so  —  some  —  not  very  much,"  said  Burke,  tool 
ing  carefully  around  his  chin.  He  had,  in  fact,  parted  with 
all  he  could  conveniently  spare  to  his  poor  friend  at  Mata- 
moros,  and  had  been  calculating  on  the  arrival  of  pay-day, 
due,  we  understood,  in  a  week  or  so,  with  a  rather  abnormal 
impatience.  [Perhaps,  in  justice  to  both  young  men,  it 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  387 

should  be  noted  here  that,  owing  to  departmental  inex 
perience  or  incompetency,  the  pay  of  our  troops  throughout 
this  war  was  very  delayed,  irregular,  and  uncertain.  I  re 
call  one  period  of  eight  months  when  the  men  were  without 
their  wages.  And  whereas  the  sensible,  and  one  would  sup 
pose  the  natural,  course  would  have  been  to  send  us  gold, 
we  received  on  more  than  one  occasion  drafts  which  we  were 
obliged  to  cash,  at  a  ruinous  discount,  with  some  blood 
sucking  native  money-changer.] 

(This  note  seems  to  have  been  written  at  some  later  date 
than  the  rest  of  the  manuscript  and  is  on  a  separate  sheet 
of  paper,  pasted  in.  M.  S.  W.) 

"How  much  do  you  need  ?"  Burke  asked  him. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know  —  fifteen  or  twenty  dollars,  just  to  last 
till  I  get  my  pay,"  said  George,  who  knew,  and  knew  that 
Burke  knew,  that  his  pay  was  already  anticipated  to  the  last 
penny.  "7  —  guess  —  you  —  can  —  let  —  me  —  have  —  it, 
Nathan,  hey  ?"  he  finished  in  a  voice  so  charged  with  meaning, 
and  a  manner  so  nearly  verging  on  the  peremptory,  that  the 
captain  turned  his  face  from  the  mirror,  and  looked  down 
upon  him,  puzzled. 

"I'll  pay  you  back  the  minute  I  get  my  money,  of  course  — 
you  know  that,  of  course,  Nat,"  George  cried,  more  humbly 
this  time,  and  shrinking  from  the  other's  eyes. 

"Do  you  owe  anybody  ?  "  said  Burke,  asking  his  invariable 
question.  "If  you  do,  bring  me  the  bill,  or  tell  me  who  the 
fellow  is,  and  I'll  settle  with  him  if  I  can.  But  I  tell  you  flat 
I'm  not  going  to  let  you  have  any  more  money  to  fool  away  — 
I  can't  afford  it.  You'll  have  to  hunt  up  somebody  else  to 
borrow  from.  I  don't  know  what  you  do  with  it,  but  you 
ought  to  have  more  backbone  than  to  borrow  this  way  all  the 
time,  and  then  keep  these  poor  devils  of  Mexicans  waiting 
for  their  wretched  little  dribs.  There's  that  fellow  in  the 
Rifles  —  that  Kentucky  man  —  what's  his  name?  Burn- 
ham? —  have  you  paid  him  yet?  He  told  me  himself,  he 
thinks  we're  cousins.  Told  me  you  borrowed  of  him  to  buy  a 
Mexican  saddle  and  bridle,  all  over  silver  stuff.  What  do  yo' 
want  with  a  thing  like  that?  You  haven't  any  horse.  It's 
time  you  grew  up,  George,  and  got  some  sense  of  responsibil 
ity.  You're  a  good  ways  off  from  your  mother  and  father 
now,  and  you've  got  to  strike  out  for  yourself.  How  do  you 


388  NATHAN   BURKE 

suppose  they'd  like  it  if  they  knew  you  were  running  in 
debt  and  getting  behind  this  way  right  along  ?  "  He  lectured 
his  subordinate  as  if  George  had  been  a  child  indeed;  he  was 
tired  of  these  petty  demands  —  tired  of  explaining  that 
Lieutenant  Ducey  was  no  kin  to  him;  the  impossibility  of 
talking  to  George  as  man  to  man  all  at  once  seemed  to  him 
exasperating. 

The  young  fellow  sat  sulkily  looking  down  at  his  beauti 
fully  polished  boots;  he  was  spick  and  span  as  customary;  a 
splendid  fragrance  of  pomatum  floated  up  from  his  waved  and 
shining  black  locks.  What  was  going  on  underneath  that 
painstaking  coiffure  ?  Or  what  agitating  the  set  of  faculties 
that  did  duty  for  a  soul  within  that  squeezed,  padded, 
tailored  body?  After  two  or  three  false  starts,  he  said,  not 
looking  at  Burke,  in  a  tone  strangely  shaken  by  fright  or 
vexation  or  both.  "  You  can  just  leave  my  father  and  mother 
out  of  it,  Mr.  Nathan  Burke,  if  you  please.  It's  no  business 
of  yours  what  they  think  about  me.  You  think  just  because 
you've  known  me  all  my  life  you  can  preach  at  me  all  you 
want.  You're  a  nice  person  to  preach,  you  are!" 

"  If  you  know  me  well  enough  to  keep  asking  me  for  money, 
you  know  me  well  enough  to  take  what  I've  got  to  say  about 
it,"  retorted  the  captain,  epigrammatically. 

"  You'd  better  look  at  home  a  little,  seems  to  me,  before 
you're  so  damn  quick  about  telling  other  people  how  they 
ought  to  be.  What'd  they  think  about  me,  hey  ?  What'd 
they  think  about  you  at  home,  if  they  knew  ?" 

"If  they  knew  ?     If  they  knew  what  ?  " 

"Oh,  pretend  you  don't  understand,  of  course,  do!  Inno 
cence!"  said  George,  sneering  faintly  with  a  ghastly  and 
ashen  face.  He  was  really  terrified,  although,  Heaven 
knows,  Burke  had  no  idea  of  intimidating  him.  It  was  not 
possible  to  take  George's  feeble  tantrums  seriously.  The 
captain  hardly  listened  to  him,  hardly  noticed  him;  he  was 
used  to  these  bursts  of  spite  and  nervousness. 

"I  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about,  George,"  he  said, 
gathering  up  his  shaving  tools;  "I  mean  what  I  say,  and  I'm 
not  alluding  to  your  family  in  any  disrespectful  way.  If 
they- 

"  If  they  knew  about  you  and  that  Darnell  girl  —  that 
Nance  Darnell,  I  guess  you  wouldn't  be  quite  so  high  and 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  389 

mighty.  How'd  you  like  to  have  everybody  at  home  know 
that,  hey  ? "  shrieked  George,  desperately.  He  started  up, 
cowering  back  as  if  he  expected  a  blow. 

But  Burke  was  thinking  of  no  such  thing.  For  an  instant 
he  was  too  surprised  at  this  sudden  revelation  of  George's 
acquaintance  with  his  movements  and  affairs  to  speak,  or  do 
anything  but  stare  blankly.  Yet  after  all  why  should  George 
not  know  —  why  should  anybody  not  know  ?  He  had  made 
no  effort  at  concealment.  Had  he  hoped  in  his  inmost  heart 
that  nobody  ever  would  find  out  ?  The  other  began  to 
breathe  less  rapidly,  even  to  assume  a  certain  air  of  com 
manding  the  situation  when  he  observed  the  captain's  con 
fusion.  For  Nat  was  confused ;  a  hundred  emotions  besieged 
him  —  regret  —  pity  for  Nance  —  an  angry  contempt  no 
less  for  himself  than  for  George  —  uneasy  anticipation  — • 
the  pained  consciousness  that  this  was  the  very  thing  the 
poor  woman  had  foreseen  and  warned  him  of,  in  her  bitter 
intuition  that  their  connection  could  not  be  explained  with 
out  blame. 

" Begin  to  feel  a  little  differently  about  it  now,  I  guess?" 
said  George,  superbly  insolent  and  secure.  Nathan  made  an 
abrupt  movement  —  he  was  only  reassembling  his  brushes 
and  razors  —  and  the  other  jumped  back  a  foot  or  more,  in  a 
panic,  clutching  and  feeling  for  his  side-arms  which,  for 
tunately,  had  been  laid  elsewhere,  and  were  out  of  his  reach. 
Burke  could  have  laughed  at  another  time. 

" Don't  be  a  fool,  George,"  he  said.  "I'm  not  going  to 
hurt  you.  What  is  all  this  talk  ?  What  do  you  know  about 
Nance  Darnell?" 

What  George  knew,  or  thought  he  knew,  may  be  imagined ; 
it  appeared  he  had  seen  the  two  of  them  together  in  Mata- 
moros,  on  the  occasion  of  Burke's  second  visit  there,  had 
tracked  Nance  to  "La  Liu  via  de  Oro,"  and  after  some  in 
quiries,  had  drawn  his  own  conclusions  —  natural  enough  in 
the  circumstances,  Burke  owned  inwardly.  A  great  deal 
more  which  never  happened  at  all  the  young  gentleman 
supplied  out  of  his  own  fervid  fancy;  and  it  occurred  to 
Burke  with  a  vivid  irony  that  George  might  possibly  protest 
too  much.  He  was  a  very  naive,  high-colored,  and  incon 
sequent  liar;  and  had  not  the  wit  to  know  that  the  plain 
truth  of  what  he  had  seen  would  serve  him  better  and  be  far 


390  NATHAN   BURKE 

more  deadly  unadorned.  Nat  himself  offered  no  denials  or 
explanations,  listening  without  a  word;  and  I  dare  say  it 
would  take  a  wiser  man  than  George  Ducey  to  distinguish 
between  innocent  silence  and  guilty  silence.  I  believe  in  my 
soul  we  all  see  what  we  want  to  see,  even  the  best  disposed  of 
us,  and  close  our  eyes  to  the  rest.  George,  at  any  rate,  was 
cock-sure  of  his  inferences. 

"  Guess  you  think  differently  about  some  little  matters 
now,  hey,  Burke?"  he  repeated  significantly,  after  a  minute 
or  two  of  this  mute  reflection  on  both  sides.  Nathan  looked 
up  inquiringly,  meeting  his  eyes,  and  this  time  George  did 
not  flinch.  His  face  took  on  an  indescribable  expression  at 
once  confident  and  wary.  "You  wouldn't  much  want  the 
home  folks  to  know  about  it,  would  you?"  he  suggested. 
"You  wouldn't  want  Mary  Sharpless  to  know,  I  guess." 
And  after  a  slight  pause,  "Got  any  money,  Nat?" 

Burke  smote  himself  a  blow  on  the  knee  in  a  sudden  illumi 
nation.  " By  —  the  —  Lord ! "  he  exclaimed  aloud.  "Don't 
jump  out  of  your  skin,  George.  I  told  you  I  wouldn't  hurt 
you.  It's  only  that  I  couldn't  make  out  for  a  minute  what 
you  were  driving  at  —  and  I  see  it  now!  The  idea  is  that  if  I 
pay  you,  you  won't  tell  on  me  —  isn't  that  it  ?" 

"Why  —  I  —  er  —  that  is  —  yes  —  only,  of  course  — " 
George  stammered,  mightily  disturbed  by  this  exceedingly 
undiplomatic  plain  speaking.  The  oblique  paths  were  natu 
ral  to  him;  he  had  not  even  the  courage  of  his  foolishness. 
Nor  could  Burke  stir  himself  to  indignation  against  so  puny  a 
creature. 

"This  is  a  bad  way  to  set  about  getting  money,  George," 
he  remarked  judicially. 

"Why,  ain't  you  —  don't  you  —  haven't  you  got  any  to 
give  me?  "  queried  the  other,  incredulous. 

Captain  Burke  arose  then;  and  recalling  the  vocabulary  of 
his  earlier  days,  informed  Lieutenant  Ducey  that  he  would 
see  him  to  —  to  never  mind  where  —  to  a  locality  much 
warmer  than  Mexico,  before  he  would  give,  lend,  or  pay  him 
one  cent.  And  furthermore,  that  the  lieutenant  had  his 
leave  to  write  home  anything  and  everything  he  something- 
or-other  pleased;  winding  up  this  highly  seasoned  harangue 
-which,  however,  the  captain  delivered  with  a  very  calm 
and  moderate  voice  and  a  tranquil  manner,  having  a  toler- 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  391 

able  control  of  himself  at  all  times,  and  not  being  an  excit 
able  man  —  by  inviting  George  to  get  out  of  his  tent  on  the 
instant,  which  the  latter  obeyed  with  a  bewildered  and  down 
cast  countenance. 

He  had  failed  as  all  such  blackmailing  schemers  should 
fail ;  and  Burke  almost  smiled  as  he  thought  of  the  extraordi 
nary  simplicity  of  all  rogues.  How  can  any  one,  in  conscience 
and  common  sense,  be  expected  to  rely  on  a  known  rascal 
keeping  his  bargain  ?  A  man  who  will  sell  his  silence  at  one 
time,  will  sell  his  information  at  another,  or  give  it  away 
when  that  suits  his  purpose.  Yet  there  are  rascals  confi 
dently  attempting  to  trade  on  such  terms  every  day  —  and 
not  always  unsuccessfully,  either.  Even  Burke,  who  had 
done  no  wrong,  was  not  too  agreeably  moved  by  the  vision 
of  what  George  would  undoubtedly  write.  Nat  knew  very 
well  that  if  he  had  friends  who  would  not  believe  it,  there 
were  those,  not  exactly  his  enemies,  who  would  believe  it; 
yet  were  he  to  be  accused  of  any  other  crime  in  the  calendar, 
he  thought  his  character  sufficiently  well  known  for  nobody 
to  believe  it!  Let  who  will  report  you  a  perjurer,  thief, 
murderer  or  what-not,  you  will  have  some  defenders;  but 
that  of  which  George  accused  him  is  the  one  sin  of  which  no 
man  is  ever  believed  guiltless. 

Nance  had  met  him  again  as  she  had  promised.  The  poor 
thing  had  put  on  a  dark,  plain  dress  and  washed  the  paint 
off  her  thin  face,  which  displayed  instead  two  bright  spots  of 
fever  high  up  on  either  cheek-bone,  under  her  cavernous  eyes. 
They  sat  in  the  alameda  in  the  quiet  shadows,  and  listened  to 
the  band,  and  watched  half  a  dozen  brown  Mexican  lads 
playing  at  bull-fight  —  one  bullet-headed  little  fellow  about 
ten  years  old  performing  as  the  bull  with  infinite  zest,  lower 
ing  his  little  black  poll  and  charging  the  others  full  tilt,  and 
pawing  the  ground,  when  the  small  banderilleros  advanced, 
with  the  utmost  dramatic  faithfulness.  Nance  laughed  — 
it  was  the  only  time  Nathan  heard  her.  She  was  humbly 
happy  and  content  with  him  until  Ridgely  passed  and  —  and 
did  not  see  them. 

"That  officer  knew  you,  Nat,  didn't  he?"  she  asked  a 
moment  afterwards,  with  the  uncanny  intuition  of  her  sex. 
"  You  know  him  ?  "  Burke  reluctantly  admitted  that  he  did. 


392  NATHAN   BURKE 

"You  didn't  either  of  you  speak,"  said  Nance.  " Never 
mind,  Nathan,  don't  go  to  making  excuses.  I  —  I  know  why 
you  didn't  speak."  And  in  a  little  while  she  said  she  was 
tired  and  would  like  to  go  "back"  —  she  never  called  the 
place  home. 

"  You  see  how  it  is,  Nat,"  she  said  at  the  door.  "  I  thought 
mebbe  —  mebbe  nobody  wouldn't  notice  me  the  way  I 
look,  you  know.  But  I  guess  'tain't  any  use.  It  shows  — 
it  shows  no  matter  what  I  got  on."  She  looked  down  at  her 
poor  shabby  clothes  regretfully.  "It's  just  the  way  I  said, 
you  can't  do  for  me  —  'tain't  fair  for  me  to  take  it  off'n  you. 
It'll  make  you  trouble  sure  as  fate.  You'd  better  let  me 
go,  Nat,  you'd  orter  let  me  go." 

"That's  all  nonsense,  and  I'm  not  going  to  let  you  go," 
said  Burke,  stoutly.  And  he  left  her,  I  trust,  a  little  heart 
ened  by  his  company  and  care.  It  was  only  a  day  or  so  later 
that  that  interview  with  George  Ducey,  which  has  already 
been  recorded,  took  place. 

Our  days  in  camp  began  to  be  full  of  activity  now;  the 
floating  rumors  condensed  at  last  into  the  definite,  authentic 
information  that  we  were  to  march  —  we  were  to  move  upon 
Camargo,  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  up  the  river,  as 
soon  as  enough  means  of  transportation  could  be  got  together. 
That  last  was  no  easy  or  simple  matter;  our  general  "raked 
and  scraped  the  country  for  miles  around  collecting  every 
pack-mule,"  as  he  afterwards  wrote  to  Washington,  from 
whence  we  had  not  been  adequately  prepared;  and  the  dismal 
intelligence  was  presently  published  in  orders,  that,  as  had 
once  before  occurred,  everybody  couldn't  go!  "The  limited 
means  of  transportation  and  the  uncertainty  in  regard  to 
supplies  .  .  .  imposes  upon  the  commanding  general  the 
necessity  of  taking  into  the  field  .  .  .  only  a  moderate  por 
tion  of  the  volunteer  force  now  under  his  orders,"  we  read 
with  long  faces,  and  much  anxiety.  Of  course  the  regulars 
were  to  go,  of  course!  Nobody  ever  doubted  that  for  a 
moment,  and  their  officers  were  saved  many  heart-burnings. 
Captain  Burke  was  well-nigh  in  a  fever  until  he  learned  — oh, 
blessed  news !  —  that  of  the  twelve  companies  selected  from 
the  First  Ohio,  his  was  one  —  owing,  most  probably,  to  the 
happy  circumstance  of  its  name  coming  near  the  top  of  the 
list  in  alphabetical  order;  and  we  were  shortly  assigned  to 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  393 

Harrier's  brigade  of  Butler's  division,  which  was  entirely  com 
posed  of  volunteers  —  a  very  invidious  distinction,  some  of 
us  thought.  And  behold  how  the  whirligig  of  time  brings  in 
its  revenges!  Hamer,  who,  when  his  name  had  been  con 
sidered  for  the  colonelcy  of  our  regiment,  had  handsomely 
withdrawn  in  favor  of  Mitchell  who  was  a  West  Point  gradu 
ate,  had  no  more  than  witnessed  our  departure  for  the  Rio 
Grande  than  the  government  elevated  him  to  a  brigadier- 
generalship,  and  he  now  might  bear  himself  in  centurion 
fashion  towards  our  commanding  officer  —  "Do  this;  and 
he  doeth  it!"  I  never  heard  that  there  was  any  bad  blood 
between  them  over  this,  however;  both  got  through  the 
campaign  without  a  great  deal  of  distinction,  and  it  is  now  a 
good  many  years  since  they  died,  each  one  in  his  bed,  peace 
ably  and  ingloriously  like  the  run  of  us,  as  if  neither  had  ever 
flourished  a  sword  and  headed  a  charge  against  the  enemies 
of  his  country.  The  other  brigade-commander  in  our  divi 
sion  was  General  Quitman  with  the  Tennessee  regiment,  and 
his  own  Mississippians,  as  had  been  foretold  for  him.  Burke's 
friend,  Kennard,  and  the  Baltimore  battalion  were  brigaded 
in  Worth's  division  of  regulars  —  the  only  volunteer  organi 
zation  thus  honored;  and  Kennard  was  so  cocky  about  it 
that  we  told  him  plainly  there  was  no  living  with  him.  We 
were  all  young  fellows,  adventurous,  high-spirited,  wildly 
elated  at  the  prospect  of  action ;  we  wanted  to  go  somewhere, 
anywhere,  and  take  a  fall  out  of  the  Mexicans;  our  ultimate 
destination  was  uncertain,  for,  as  somebody  said,  "old  Taylor 
was  as  silent  as  the  grave";  but  every  one  was  confident 
it  was  either  Monterey  or  Saltillo.  Ampudia  —  perhaps 
Santa  Anna!  —  was  somewhere  in  our  front;  his  light  horse 
and  those  terrific  Mexican  Lancers  of  whom  we  now  began  to 
hear  for  the  first  time  were  reported  to  have  been  seen  in  a 
dozen  different  places,  fluttering  over  the  country,  and,  it 
must  be  added,  scuttling  off  with  amazing  expedition  for 
such  formidable  bodies,  whenever  our  heroes  appeared. 
Walker,  making  a  reconnoissance  in  his  frontier  fashion,  had 
got  quite  close  to  their  camp  not  far  from  Mier;  McCullough 
had  a  brush  with  them  a  few  miles  north  of  Revilla  — 
Captain  Benjamin  McCullough,  greatest  of  scouts,  a  figure 
something  in  the  style  of  Mr.  Cooper's  "Pathfinder."  Most 
of  us  were  pretty  well  up  in  that  piece  of  classic  fiction.  And 


394  NATHAN   BURKE 

whereas  we  had  all  been  insufferably  proud  of  our  uniforms 
and  gilt  braid  at  home,  no  sooner  had  we  reached  the  seat  of 
war  and  beheld  one  of  Walker's  or  McCullough's  men  than 
we  were  consumed  with  envy;  how  we  should  have  rejoiced 
to  change  places!  The  Ranger  was  always  a  sunburned 
young  man,  dressed  anyhow,  booted  anyhow,  with  a  slouched 
hat  and  a  slouching  gait.  He  tied  a  bandanna  handkerchief, 
or,  failing  that,  any  soiled  rag  that  came  handy,  about  his 
muscular  throat;  his  ammunition-belt  sloped  in  apparent 
carelessness  about  his  waist;  he  carried  a  pistol  or  a  rifle  as 
best  suited  him,  for  every  Ranger  was  a  law  unto  himself  in 
that  respect.  He  could  ride  anything  that  went  on  four  legs, 
he  would  as  lief  fight  as  eat,  he  slept,  waked,  ate,  and  drank 
at  his  discretion,  addressed  his  captain  as  "Ben,"  and  had  no 
more  notion  of  discipline,  drill,  or  manoeuvres  than  an  Ind 
ian.  He  was  a  born  fighter,  but  he  would  fight  in  his  fron 
tiersman's  way  —  which  means  that  he  considered  himself 
an  army  of  one  man,  and  planned  his  campaigns  accordingly; 
nor  will  anybody  deny  that  his  way  served  the  circumstances 
well,  and  had  its  influence  on  the  fighting-schools  of  the  world. 
Burke,  who  had  been  brought  up  in  the  backwoods  system, 
was  not  so  prejudiced  but  that  he  could  perceive  its  disad 
vantages;  indeed  he  had  got  books  of  tactics  and  military 
history  and  studied  them  diligently,  and  tried  to  inform 
himself,  before  leaving  home.  But  the  old  leaven  was  strong; 
he  would  not  have  minded  exchanging  his  shoulder-straps  for 
the  Rangers'  costume,  which  seemed  to  him  on  the  whole 
much  more  sensible,  appropriate,  and  comfortable  for  this 
climate  and  this  way  of  life  than  the  stocks  —  "black  silk 
or  leather"  —  the  brimless  little  caps,  and  long-skirted  coats 
of  our  equipment.  He  talked  to  many  of  the  Rangers,  and 
listened  to  their  plain  stories  of  adventure,  hardship,  reckless 
and  entirely  unboasted  bravery,  with  the  same  interest  with 
which,  as  a  boy,  he  had  followed  Darnell.  "How  old  Jake 
would  have  liked  this!"  he  sometimes  thought  with  a  smile. 
In  the  midst  of  their  preparations,  Captain  Burke,  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world,  had  very  little  time  to  spare  for  his 
private  affairs  —  or  at  least,  for  that  which  concerned  him 
most  nearly,  the  girl  at  Matamoros.  What  he  ought  to  do 
about  her,  what  was  to  become  of  her,  gave  him  not  a  little 
anxiety  when  he  stopped  to  consider  it;  he  could  not  take 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  395 

her,  he  disliked  to  leave  her,  and  she  herself  displayed  a 
stubbornness  about  accepting  his  support  which  complicated 
the  question.  Once  he  thought  of  enlisting  Mrs.  Jefferson's 
sympathy,  but  dismissed  the  idea  with  a  wry  smile;  that  was 
hopeless,  as  he  knew  too  well  from  former  experience;  no 
virtuous,  good  woman,  no  honest  woman  —  as  the  phrase 
is  —  would  lend  a  hand  to  Nance  Darnell.  It  was  unfair  to 
expect  it;  they  had  their  own  children  and  families  to  think 
of,  and  if  for  no  other  reason,  must  decline  association  of 
any  kind  with  her.  The  argument  may  sound  cold-blooded, 
but  I  should  like  to  hear  anybody  refute  it.  Nathan  some 
times  felt  the  problem  to  be  without  solution,  at  any  rate  for 
him,  who  had  a  thousand  other  matters  on  his  mind.  The 
condition  of  his  company  was  not  the  least  of  these;  he  had 
eighteen  or  twenty  men  on  the  sick  list;  every  known  dis 
ease  had  broken  out  amongst  them,  it  seemed  to  him,  ex 
cept  the  yellow  fever,  of  which,  strangely  enough,  there  never 
was  a  single  case  that  I  know  of  in  the  Rio  Grande  camp. 
And  this,  too,  although  we  were  there  in  an  unhealthy  season 
of  the  year,  and  the  Mexicans  were  reported  to  be  counting 
on  the  assistance  of  General  Vomito,  as  they  said  in  a  dreadful 
sort  of  joke.  At  the  time,  however,  Burke  was  in  daily  fear 
of  its  appearance  —  he  might  be  a  captain  without  a  company 
—  and  how,  then,  could  he  go  to  Monterey,  or  wherever  we 
were  bound? 

All  this  was  a  borrowing  of  trouble,  I  find  by  reference  to 
that  reliable  publication  out  of  which  our  schoolboy  learns  — 
or  does  not  learn  —  the  history  of  his  grandfather's  cam 
paigns,  that  the  volunteer  troops  of  the  United  States  Army 
began  to  march  up  the  river  on  the  llth  of  August,  1846. 
Our  first  halt  was  at  Matamoros  where  we  were  to  lay  a  day 
or  so;  and  where  Captain  Burke's  earliest  care,  after  the 
disposition  of  his  command,  was  to  visit  "La  Lluvia  de  Oro." 
He  was  saluted  by  the  pock-marked  porter,  to  whom  he  was 
now  well  known,  with  a  grimace  of  vile  suggestion;  and  then 
this  worthy  handed  him  a  letter  intimating  at  the  same  time 
that,  to  his  own  unmeasured  distress,  the  captain  was  to  be 
disappointed.  "La  nina  se  fue!"  he  said,  looking  like  a 
benevolent  gargoyle. 

Burke  surveyed  him  in  perplexity,  turning  the  letter  in 
his  hand.  He  was  not  very  glib  at  the  Spanish  tongue,  and 


396  NATHAN   BURKE 

was  uncertain  whether  he  had  understood  correctly.  "She's 
gone  away,  you  say?  Is  that  it?  Where?" 

The  man  did  not  know.  "Quien  sabe?"  He  raised  a 
shoulder  in  a  gesture  that  at  once  released  him  from  all  re 
sponsibility,  indicated  his  ignorance,  and  expressed  his  regret. 
She  had  given  him  the  letter  for  el  Senor  Capitan  —  she  had 
forgotten  to  give  him,  Manuel,  anything  —  not  the  smallest 
—  una  propina.  —  Did  the  Senor  understand  ?  Something  for 
himself,  Manuel  —  was  it  not  worth  it?  —  not  everybody 
could  be  trusted  to  deliver  a  letter,  eh?  Senor,  a  thousand 
thanks ! 

Burke  walked  away,  disregarding  Manuel's  pressing  invi 
tation  to  come  in  and  stay  awhile.  Nance  had  taken  the 
decision  into  her  own  hands,  it  seemed;  the  young  man  was 
struck  with  horror  and  remorse  at  finding  himself  a  little 
relieved.  He  stopped  near  a  stall  at  the  corner  of  the  market- 
square,  where  two  or  three  peon  women  were  squatting  in  the 
dust  with  their  wares  spread  before  them,  and  a  mess  bubbling 
in  an  earthenware  pan  on  their  little  brazier.  An  oil  lamp 
flared  overhead.  Burke  opened  the  letter;  it  was  written 
in  a  cramped,  formless  hand  on  a  single  sheet  of  shining  pink 
note-paper,  and  began  with  the  stilted  phrases  which  the 
volumes  that  professed  to  teach  this  kind  of  composition  used 
to  recommend  in  those  days. 

"DEAR  FREND  NAT, 

"I  take  up  my  pen  to  inform  you  that  I  am  well  and  hope 
you  are  the  same,  and  when  this  meets  yore  eye  I  will  be  far 
away.  I  am  going  away  from  here  Nat  and  its  no  use  yore 
hunting  me  up  becawse  I  dont  meen  you  to  find  me.  Theres 
no  use  talking  enny  more  about  it  Ive  done  enuff  bad  and  I 
dont  want  to  do  enny  more  least  I  dont  want  to  hurt  you. 
And  it  woold  hurt  you  Nathan  if  you  was  to  have  me  hanging 
onto  you  the  hole  time.  That  girl  yore  going  to  get  married 
too  she  woodent  like  it  for  one  and  I  hope  she  wont  never 
know  about  me  and  you  woold  better  not  tell  her  becawse 
she  woodent  ever  get  over  wurrying  you  about  me.  I  hope 
youl  be  very  happy  marrid  Nat  and  alluz  treet  her  good  like 
you  alluz  done  everybody  and  try  and  get  home  to  the  meals 
on  time  becawse  I  riccolleck  that  used  to  wurry  Mrs.  Ducey 
so  about  the  men-folks  not  getting  home  to  the  meals  on  time. 


ALARUMS.     EXCURSIONS  397 

I  gess  most  ladies  like  her  and  yore  girl  wurries  about  things 
like  that.  And  I  hope  youl  have  a  little  boy  right  away.  I 
hope  it  ant  rong  for  me  to  put  that  in  a  letter  to  a  jentelman. 
So  no  more  at  present  and  goodbye  from  yore  affexshunate 

"NANCE. 

"  Ime  afrade  it  ant  wrote  nor  spelled  very  good  but  you 
know  I  never  had  much  scholing.  Pleese  dont  try  to  hunt 
me  up.  It  done  me  good  to  see  you  Nat." 

Nathan  read  it  through  twice;  it  had  been  written  with 
many  painful  erasures  and  corrections,  yet  was  a  sorry  thing 
at  best.  There  was  a  large  round  blister  beside  the  final 
words,  "It  done  me  good  to  see  you  Nat."  Burke  looked  at 
it  with  a  blur  in  his  eyes.  The  women  at  his  feet  were  cluck 
ing  and  chattering  together  in  their  lingo  and  as  he  folded 
up  the  paper  and  moved  to  go  on,  began  a  shrill  crying  of 
their  sweetmeats  and  tortillas  to  the  American  officer.  The 
sight  of  the  food  sickened  him.  He  went  back  to  his  quarters 
weary  and  heavy-hearted;  and  tossed  all  night  long  in  his 
unrefreshing  slumbers. 

It  was  not  wholly  depression  of  spirits  that  ailed  the  young 
man,  as  he  was  inclined  to  imagine  at  the  beginning.  The 
brigade  moved  in  a  couple  of  days ;  it  formed  part  of  the  field 
division  which  was  the  last  in  the  line  of  march,  both  Worth's 
and  Twiggs'  being  in  advance  of  us.  And  doubtless  the  First 
Ohio  made  a  brave  appearance  and  stepped  along  as  gallantly 
as  any  other  regiment  in  the  volunteer  service,  even  though 
it  was  deprived  temporarily  of  one  of  its  most  valuable 
officers.  For  alas  for  glory  and  ambition!  Captain  Burke 
lay  very  sick  of  the  measles  in  the  hospital  at  Matamoros, 
and  turning  in  his  fever,  saw  wild  visions  and  heard  delirious 
noises  mingling  with  the  tramp  of  the  infantry  beneath  the 
windows  and  the  bugles  sounding  the  march. 


CHAPTER  V 
IN  WHICH  THE  WARRIOR  LANGUISHES  IN  HIS  TENT 

THE  disease  of  measles  which  children  are  expected  to 
endure  as  a  matter  of  course  and  without  a  murmur  is  in 
adult  years  accompanied  by  a  prostrating  fever,  with  cough- 
ings,  retchings,  and  other  disorders  that  somewhat  tax  the 
patience  and  philosophy  of  the  sufferer.  Burke,  who  upon 
the  appearance  of  its  first  symptoms  had  pooh-poohed  our 
regimental  surgeon's  orders,  and  announced  his  intention 
of  marching  with  the  troops  at  their  appointed  time,  in 
twenty-four  hours  lapsed  into  a  state  when  he  was  quite 
indifferent  to  the  movements  of  the  army;  and  never  retained 
more  than  a  hazy  and  distorted  recollection  of  those  days 
when  the  malady  was  at  its  height.  He  went  fishing  with 
Jake  Darnell,  he  tried  cases  in  court,  he  posted  the  ledger  for 
DUCEY  &  Co.,  he  cut  grass,  he  made  love  to  Mary  Sharp- 
less;  anon  he  came  to  his  senses,  and  looked  upon  the  high 
ceiling  towering  overhead,  and  the  blank  walls,  and  the  bare 
red  tile  floor  with  a  feeble  wonder;  and  wanted  to  get  up 
because  the  reveille  was  sounding;  and  sank  back  once  more 
to  his  burning  dreams. 

During  the  first  two  days,  if  anything  could  have  added  to 
the  captain's  fever,  it  would  have  been  the  hot  coals  figura 
tively  heaped  upon  his  head  by  his  first  lieutenant.  The 
hospital  at  Matamoros  like  all  the  American  army  hospitals 
in  Mexico  —  I  tell  the  truth  to  our  shame  —  was  an  unwhole 
some  barracks,  dirty,  neglected,  ill-supplied  with  medicines 
or  the  proper  food  for  invalids;  and  the  nursing  so  incompe 
tent  that  none  but  the  most  robust  of  the  sick  men  stood  much 
chance  of  recovery,  whatever  their  ills.  In  spite  of  all  this, 
George  Ducey,  the  moment  he  heard  of  his  senior's  seizure, 
hastened  to  this  unattractive  place,  and  for  the  remaining 
time  before  the  regiment  marched,  hardly  left  his  bedside; 

398 


THE   WARRIOR   LANGUISHES   IN    HIS   TENT     399 

nor  could  any  one  have  asked  a  kinder,  more  patient,  cheer 
ful,  and  zealous  attention.  It  was  a  work  of  genuine  mercy 
and  charity;  and  showed  that  warm-heartedness  of  his 
mother's  which,  as  John  Vardaman  used  to  say,  was  the  least 
of  Mrs.  Ducey's  good  qualities  and  the  best  of  George's. 
Whatever  cause  Burke  may  have  had  to  complain  of  him, 
let  me  set  this  much  down  to  George  Ducey's  credit;  and  I 
may  add  that  it  was  the  only  one  of  his  actions  about  which 
I  never  knew  him  to  lie  or  boast.  I  am  the  more  anxious 
that  it  should  be  acknowledged,  because,  at  the  time,  Nat 
was  scarcely  conscious  of  the  other's  presence  and  care  and 
certainly  must  have  seen  him  go  without  a  word  of  thanks. 
When  he  strove  to  recall  what  happened  during  this  period  of 
his  illness,  he  classed  George  with  the  rest  of  the  phantoms 
of  that  fever-haunted  time  —  with  visions  of  his  colonel  and 
other  uniformed  figures  appearing,  murmuring  in  the  corners, 
eying  him  from  the  foot  of  the  bed,  and  drifting  away  — 
with  the  doctor,  and  with  some  dark-skinned  Mexican 
woman  who  was  forever  trying  to  make  him  drink.  It  was 
from  these  latter  that  he  afterwards  learned  of  George's 
devotion  —  learned  with  a  kind  of  shamed  surprise. 

When  he  arrived  at  the  convalescent  stage  in  a  week  or 
more, —  for  measles,  if  severe,  are  also  mercifully  of  short  dura 
tion,  and,  being  in  clean  physical  condition  when  attacked, 
Nat  perhaps  made  a  better  recovery  than  had  he  been  of  a 
weak  or  sickly  habit,  —  the  army  was  gone  excepting  the 
slight  garrison  Taylor  had  left  behind  to  secure  the  post. 
Matamoros  had  returned  almost  to  its  native  calm;  there 
was  an  uncanny  silence  abroad;  no  more  ordnance  rumbling 
through  the  contracted  streets;  no  more  Rangers,  " bloody 
with  spurring,  fiery  red  with  haste,"  thundering  in  from  the 
country,  jingling  and  clattering  with  straps  and  stirrup- 
buckles,  exactly  as  you  may  hear  the  mounted  messengers 
"off  stage"  when  you  go  of  a  night  to  see  "  Shenandoah" 
or  Mr.  Gillette  in  "Held  by  the  Enemy."  No  more  soldiers 
drunk  and  sober,  fighting  or  friendly,  crowding  the  liquor- 
shops  to  the  doors,  hurrahing  and  horse-playing,  gambling, 
cock-maining,  throwing  their  money  to  the  four  winds. 
Never  before  —  and  probably  never  since  —  had  the  stolid 
little  town  known  such  a  time  of  excitement  and  profit. 
But  lo,  now  even  the  saloon-keepers  and  faro-dealers  packed 


400  NATHAN   BURKE 

up  their  stock  in  trade  and  took  the  trail  for  Camargo;  per- 
haps  some  of  the  " actors"  too  —  vultures  all,  battening  on 
the  refuse  of  both  armies.  The  Mexican  tradesmen  were 
reappearing;  the  gentry,  many  of  whom  had  fled  in  a  panic 
to  their  outlying  haciendas  on  the  approach  of  the  Americans, 
dug  up  their  money  and  valuables  and  timidly  returned. 
"Still,  the  place  is  dead,  perfectly  dead.  We're  going  back 
to  the  States  as  soon  as  we  can  raise  the  money,"  a  friend  of 
Burke's  confided  to  him. 

This  was  young  Mr.  Joseph  Jefferson,  who,  happening 
in  his  public  station  where  all  the  gossip  of  the  camp  was 
briskly  circulated  to  hear  of  the  captain's  illness,  came  at 
once  to  visit  him,  with  that  kind  and  hearty  sympathy 
which  I  am  sure  has  always  been  characteristic  of  this  gentle 
man.  At  first  he  was  not  admitted,  Burke's  exceedingly 
unromantic  complaint  being  then  at  its  worst;  but  his  second 
call  found  the  invalid  sitting  up,  weak  and  unshaven,  and, 
I  think,  displaying  that  hopeful  sign,  a  furious  bad  temper. 

"Where's  your  brother?"  said  Joseph,  looking  all  about; 
"that  young  fellow  that  was  here  taking  care  of  you  before, 
I  mean.  He  was  your  brother,  wasn't  he?" 

Burke  growled  out,  No,  he  wasn't  —  he  wasn't  any  kin 
to  him  —  his  name  was  Ducey  —  he  wished  to  Heaven 
people  wouldn't  be  everlastingly  poking  it  at  him  that  George 
Ducey  was  his  brother.  Why,  he'd  marched  —  gone  with 
the  army. 

"It's  a  pity  he  had  to  go  —  he  was  a  mighty  good  nurse, 
the  doctor  said." 

"He  was  good  to  me,"  the  other  admitted  rather  shame 
facedly;  "I  didn't  know  much  about  it.  I've  been  out  of 
my  head  right  along." 

"Yes.  So  they  said.  He  knows  Badger  —  wasn't  it 
funny?  Met  him  here  in  Matamoros,  playing  fa  —  that  is, 
around  somewhere  in  town,  I  mean,"  said  Jefferson,  correct 
ing  himself  hastily.  "But  Ed  didn't  know  his  name,  either 
-half  the  time  you  don't  ask  people's  names,  there're  so 
many  officers." 

"  Badger?     Who's  Badger?  " 

"Why,  my  partner,  Ed  Badger.  Didn't  you  meet  him  — 
oh,  no,  I  remember,  he  wasn't  around  the  day  you  were  there. 
I'll  bring  him  up  some  day  soon  to  see  you.  There  isn't 


THE   WARRIOR   LANGUISHES   IN   HIS   TENT     401 

anything  to  do  now  any  more  —  the  bottom's  out  of  the 
coffee-and-pie  business." 

"Has  the  'Grand  Spanish  Saloon'  gone  up,  too?"  Burke 
inquired  with  a  flicker  of  interest. 

" Nothing  left  of  it  but  the  bad  name  and  fixtures,"  said 
the  boy  with  a  sigh  of  humorous  regret.  "  Trade  fell  off 
terribly  here  when  the  army  went,  you  know.  There's 
nobody  to  get  drunk  —  no  Americans,  that  is.  You  can't 
make  a  living  getting  the  Mexicans  drunk  on  pulque.  It's 
only  about  three  cents  a  glass  —  and  they're  wjialing  big 
glasses!  Our  proprietor  got  discouraged  and  quit.  Mata- 
moros  was  no  place  for  an  honest,  hard-working  fellow  like 
him.  We're  going,  too  — "  and  he  made  the  statement 
quoted  above. 

He  kept  his  word,  to  bring  Mr.  Badger,  thinking,  no  doubt, 
in  the  goodness  of  his  heart,  that  Burke  would  like  to  meet 
and  talk  to  somebody  who  knew  his  dear  friend  Ducey, 
whom,  however,  the  actor  only  referred  to  very  briefly  and 
with  a  queer  side-glance  at  Nathan,  which  the  latter  thought 
he  understood.  Nat  was  glad  enough  to  make  Badger's 
acquaintance  for  his  own  sake;  he  was  a  most  amiable  and 
genial  man.  He  had  been  on  the  stage  all  his  life,  and  was 
now  some  twenty-eight  or  thirty  years  old,  with  a  nonde 
script,  serviceable  education  picked  up  nobody  knows  how, 
a  pair  of  astonishingly  long,  active  legs  trained  to  various 
tricks  of  dancing  and  drollery,  the  ideal  face  for  Sam  Weller, 
and  secret  aspirations  towards  Hamlet.  He  was  a  great 
deal  funnier  off  the  stage,  and  when  he  meant  to  be  serious, 
than  on,  when  he  wanted  to  be  funny  —  as  I  can  testify, 
having  seen  him  in  both  localities.  Joe  and  he,  they  said, 
had  appeared  together  in  those  comedy  parts  where  the 
humor  is  pointed  and  emphasized  by  a  foot  or  so  of  difference 
in  height.  But  even  in  those  young  days  Jefferson  must 
have  been  ten  times  the  better  actor.  During  the  fortnight 
while  Burke  was  getting  back  his  strength  —  with  a  slowness 
maddening  to  his  impatient  spirit  —  the  two  young  men  used 
to  come  and  entertain  him  by  the  hour  almost  daily;  they 
read,  they  sang,  they  painted  their  faces,  got  out  a  pair  of 
" property"  weapons  and  performed  a  broadsword  combat 
for  him  in  character,  with  tremendous  ha-mgs  and  stampings. 
They  spouted  Shakespeare  to  the  captain  who  had  had  few 

2D 


402  NATHAN    BURKE 

opportunities  of  going  to  the  theatre  in  our  little  city,  and 
had  never  witnessed  a  presentation  of  the  dramas  he  so  loved 
to  read.  Honest  Badger  raged  and  roared  and  tore  a  pas 
sion  to  tatters,  swelling  the  veins  in  his  neck,  and  rolling  out 
his  r's  with  a  grand  good-will  —  Bless  me,  I  can  hear  him 
now:  "I'd  r-r-r-ather-r-r  be  a  DOG,  and  BAY  the  MOON,  than 
such  a  RR-r-r-oman ! "  These  were  Badger's  conceptions  of 
high  tragedy;  whereas  Jefferson  made  few  gestures,  and 
seldom  raised  his  voice  out  of  an  ordinary  speaking  tone,  yet 
the  words  sought  one's  very  heart.  I  have  heard  him  repeat 
those  lines'  of  the  poor  little  Prince  Arthur  — 

"  So  I  were  out  of  prison  and  kept  sheep, 
I  should  be  merry  as  the  day  is  long  —  " 

with  an  accent  so  simple,  wistful,  and  touching,  it  brought 
tears  to  the  eyes. 

The  night  before  he  left  Matamoros,  Captain  Burke, 
somewhat  haggard  about  the  jaws,  and  not  so  steady  upon 
his  legs  —  which  now  appeared  even  longer  and  lanker  than 
Badger's  —  as  he  had  been,  but  still  in  a  tolerably  fair  way 
towards  his  usual  health,  went  to  bid  Mrs.  Jefferson  good- 
by  —  they  themselves  were  going  down  to  the  Brazos  in  a 
few  days;  and  Burke  spent  the  evening  and  got  the  lady 
to  recite  for  him  the  speech  of  Katharine  before  her  judges, 
a  thing  for  nobility  and  dignity  and  womanliness  long  to 
be  remembered;  he  also  displayed  an  appetite  for  dinner 
which  he  has  ever  since  recalled  with  shame;  and  he  passed 
some  jokes  about  Metta  —  who  had  another  lover,  a  Mexican 
lad  with  a  belt  full  of  knives  —  to  Joe's  confusion;  and  came 
away  at  last  regretfully  wondering  if  he  would  ever  see  them 
again,  players  being  a  wandering  tribe.  Indeed,  it  was  a 
good  while;  the  next  time  that  he  met  Joseph  was  at  least 
twenty  years  later,  when  the  latter  was  playing  an  engage 
ment  in  Chicago  —  it  was  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  then  newly 
added  to  his  repertory.  Burke  watched  the  performance, 
and,  I  dare  say,  blew  his  nose  with  suspicious  frequency 
while  it  was  going  on,  from  an  orchestra  chair;  and  after  the 
second  act  ventured  around  to  the  stage  door,  and  sent  up 
his  card,  having  written  "Matamoros"  upon  it  for  identifi 
cation.  But  Rip  remembered  him  at  once,  sent  word  for 
General  Burke  to  come  up  to  his  dressing-room,  and  as  the 


THE   WARRIOR   LANGUISHES   IN   HIS   TENT     403 

latter  entered,  saluted  him  from  the  table  where  he  was 
engaged  with  grease  paint  and  what-not  in  metamorphosing 
a  very  active  and  youthful-looking  man  of  thirty-five  into 
a  decrepit  personage  with  flowing  white  hair  and  a  coat  of 
wonderful  stage  rags  —  I  say  he  saluted  Burke  with,  "This 
isn't  a  very  good  place  for  a  boy  like  you,  my  son!"  and  they 
both  roared  out  laughing. 

The  captain  also  received  a  hearty  God-speed  from  Mr. 
Badger,  who  at  this  time  had  some  notion  of  joining  the  army 
himself,  and  asked  all  manner  of  absurd  questions  about  the 
needful  steps.  Edward,  who  was  a  harmlessly  vain,  good- 
hearted,  helter-skelter  sort  of  fellow,  rather  fancied  himself 
in  the  costume,  posing  for  a  charge  at  the  head  of  a  division 
—  no  mere  regiment  or  company  would  have  satisfied  him. 
And  I  have  no  doubt  he  would  have  done  his  duty,  and 
carried  himself  bravely  before  the  enemy.  But,  although 
he  did  turn  up  in  Monterey  after  the  capitulation  among  the 
hordes  of  Americans  from  everywhere  and  nowhere  who 
mysteriously  swarmed  into  the  place  on  the  heels  of  our  men, 
Badger  had  by  that  time  forgotten  all  about  his  military 
ambitions;  he  had  joined  a  circus  company  instead!  Burke 
hunted  him  up  and  tried  in  some  measure  to  return  his  kind 
nesses;  and  presently  lost  sight  of  him  again  when  we 
marched  for  Victoria.  If  the  captain  could  have  foreseen 
the  semi-tragic  circumstances  of  his  next  meeting  with  this 
jovial  mountebank,  what  would  have  been  his  astonish 
ment  and  dismay! 

Captain  Burke  then  moved  upon  Monterey  in  good 
order,  the  first  days  of  September,  making  all  the  speed  he 
could,  for  he  knew  that  his  associates  of  the  field  division 
had  by  this  time  reached  Camargo,  and  the  regulars  were 
probably  farther  still  on  the  road.  This  was  the  news  that 
had  come  down  the  river,  with  any  number  of  the  usual 
wildly  contradictory  rumors  about  overwhelming  forces  of 
Mexicans  ready  to  give  battle  in  our  front,  fierce  cavalry 
skirmishing  on  our  flanks,  ambuscades,  and  alarms;  the 
enemy  were  alternately  said  to  be  contesting  every  inch  of 
the  way,  and  falling  back  like  sheep;  the  populace  were  at 
one  and  the  same  time  welcoming  us  with  open  arms  as 
deliverers  of  the  oppressed  —  this  was  a  favorite  fiction  in 


404  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  American  camp  —  and  lurking  in  the  rear  to  rob  and 
murder  the  unwary  as  we  marched.  The  transports  were 
still  plying  on  the  river,  although  as  it  was  now  approaching 
the  beginning  of  the  dry  season,  Burke  was  informed  that 
they  might  not  ply  much  longer,  Camargo  being  the  limit  of 
navigation  at  any  time.  He  was  amazed  to  find  on  a  visit 
made  to  Texas  in  later  years  that  the  Rio  Grande,  which  he 
remembered  as  a  mighty  and  majestic  body  of  water  near  its 
mouth,  shrank,  several  hundred  miles  farther  up  at  the  town 
of  Laredo,  to  a  pitiful  narrowness  —  though  still  big  enough 
to  have  held  some  dozen  or  more  of  the  captain's  native 
Scioto.  That,  however,  was  in  the  middle  of  winter  when 
not  a  drop  of  rain  had  fallen  in  these  parts  for  months. 
Nat  got  himself  and  his  luggage  on  board  one  of  the  boats, 
in  company  with  a  handful  of  other  convalescents  likewise 
bent  on  rejoining  their  commands,  and  they  would  have 
had  a  pleasant  enough  voyage  of  it  if  everybody  had  not  been 
in  such  a  state  of  feverish  hurry.  They  sat  about  the  hot, 
steamy  decks,  cursing  their  ill  luck  aloud,  the  very  worst 
and  most  profanely  impatient  of  them  all  being,  as  I  remem 
ber,  a  ghastly  pale,  weak  young  lieutenant  who  had  been  in 
hospital  with  some  kind  of  low  fever,  and  was  not  nearly 
recovered.  Burke  and  the  others  guessed  that  this  poor 
boy  was  already  bound  upon  a  different  and  longer  journey; 
he  failed  visibly;  and,  indeed,  had  a  relapse  and  died  within 
a  few  days  after  landing;  and  the  officers,  his  fellow-travel 
lers,  took  up  a  collection  amongst  themselves  to  bury  him. 
One  of  the  party  remarked  after  the  funeral  with  a  grisly 
humor  that  he  was  going  to  follow  poor  -  —  's  example, 
get  the  good  of  his  money  while  he  could,  and  die  with  empty 
pockets  —  "for,"  said  he,  "why  bother  about  leaving 
enough  to  bury  you  decently?  You'll  be  buried,  never  fear! 
Nobody's  going  to  leave  you  lying  around,  I  guess."  The 
fact  is,  none  of  them  had  much  money  at  this  time. 

At  Camargo  the  squad  of  convalescents  was  augmented  by 
a  very  large  number  who  had  been  in  hospital  there.  Whether 
the  place  itself  was  unhealthy,  or  the  army  overtaxed  by 
the  march  thither  —  for  not  a  tenth  could  be  taken  by  the 
transports  —  the  sick-list  was  so  heavy  here  that  the  men 
got  to  calling  this  camp  "the  Graveyard";  and  perhaps 
added  to  its  dire  reputation  by  joining  the  ranks  when  they 


THE   WARRIOR   LANGUISHES    IN   HIS   TENT     405 

should  have  been  in  their  beds.  The  rear  guard  had  marched 
thirty-six  hours  before  Burke's  arrival  —  oh,  cursed  spite 
of  Fate!  He  had  known  that  we  could  not  reach  them  in 
time;  but  thirty-six  hours  is  a  provokingly  narrow  margin. 
The  impressive  figure  of  Fame  seemed  to  be  receding  before 
us,  like  a  will-o'-the-wisp.  For  nothing  was  more  certain, 
we  said  to  one  another  with  gloomy  head-shakes,  than  that 
an  action  would  take  place  before  we  could  catch  up  with  the 
army;  Santa  Anna  would  never  allow  Taylor  to  get  within 
striking  distance  of  Monterey  without  opposition;  there 
would  be  a  great  fight  and  a  great  victory  —  for  the  Ameri 
cans,  of  course  —  and  we  wouldn't  be  there ! 

Santa  Anna,  as  it  happened,  was  nowhere  in  the  neighbor 
hood,  nor  dreaming  of  coming  there,  although  as  he  was 
generalissimo  of  the  Mexican  forces  he  might  well  have  been 
directing  their  movements.  But  it  was  Ampudia  who 
commanded  at  Monterey  with  troops  variously  reported  as 
numbering  all  the  way  from  two  thousand  to  ten.  And  on 
the  very  day  when  Captain  Burke  and  his  companions  set 
out  from  Camargo  —  the  body  of  the  army  having  now 
reached  Serai vo  —  the  Mexican  "  General-in-Chief  of  the 
Army  of  the  North"  as  he  styled  himself,  issued  a  fiery 
address  in  Napoleonic  phrases  to  the  patriots  under  him: 
''Soldiers!"  said  he,  with  a  tremendous  flourish,  " Soldiers! 
The  enemy,  numbering  only  2500  regular  troops,  the  re 
mainder  being  only  a  band  of  adventurers  without  valor 
or  discipline,  are,  according  to  reliable  information,  about 
advancing  upon  Seralvo  to  commit  the  barbarity  of  attack 
ing  this  most  important  place ;  we  count  nearly  3000  regulars 
and  auxiliary  cavalry,  and  these  will  defeat  them  again  and 
again  before  they  can  reach  this  city.  Soldiers,  we  are  con 
structing  fortifications  .  .  .  and  thence  we  will  sally  forth 
at  a  convenient  time  and  drive  back  this  enemy  at  the  point 
of  the  bayonet!  Soldiers!  I  have  assured  the  supreme 
government  of  the  triumph  of  our  arms,  confiding  in  your 
loyalty  and  enthusiasm.  .  .  .  Soldiers!  Victory  or  death 
must  be  our  only  device!" 

The  plain  old  man  who  commanded  on  our  side  did  not 
think  it  necessary  to  discharge  any  such  blast  of  eloquence 
upon  his  troops,  expecting  us,  it  is  likely,  to  do  our  duty  with 
out  any  words  about  it,  as  he  did  his;  and  to  be  sure,  has 


406  NATHAN   BURKE 

not  General  Scott  pointed  out  that  "...  he  (Taylor) 
was  slow  of  thought,  hesitant  in  speech,  and  unused  to  the 
pen,"  all  defects  of  which  no  man  on  earth  could  accuse 
General  Scott.  We  were  obliged  to  advance  upon  Mon 
terey  without  encouragement  in  this  line  from  old  Rough-and- 
Ready,  and  I  hardly  think  we  could  have  bettered  the  re 
sults  even  had  Taylor  been  possessed  of  Scott's  fluency. 
By  what  the  ex-invalids  hurrying  in  the  rear  regarded  as 
nothing  less  than  a  direct  interposition  of  Providence,  the 
army,  having  committed  the  barbarity  of  occupying  Seralvo, 
halted  there  four  days  to  concentrate;  it  was  halted  again 
a  couple  of  days'  march  farther  at  the  village  of  Marin; 
and  it  was  here,  within  twenty-five  miles  of  Monterey,  that 
we  at  last  overtook  them.  Captain  Burke  reported  for  duty 
the  18th  of  September,  and  so  far  not  a  shot  had  been  fired. 

Our  army  was  encamped  in  a  plain  or  plateau  bordered  by 
the  San  Juan  River,  and  surrounded  by  most  lovely  moun 
tain  scenery,  the  like  of  which  few  of  us  had  ever  beheld, 
coming  from  the  quiet  landscapes  of  our  native  states.  Ken- 
nard,  whom  Burke  fell  in  with  on  the  way  to  division  head 
quarters, —  he  did  not  know  the  captain  had  been  ill,  and 
heard  it  with  a  very  kind  concern,  —  said  it  reminded  him 
a  little  of  Harper's  Ferry.  "The  Mexicans  call  that  biggest 
mountain  The  Saddle"  he  explained;  "it  looks  like  one, 
doesn't  it  ?  And  the  other's  The  Mitre.  You  can  see  the 
city  from  places  around  here,  the  air's  so  clear;  I  saw  it 
yesterday.  It's  funny  to  think  we're  so  near  at  last.  And 
the  queerest  thing,  Burke,  the  little,  silent,  empty  towns 
we've  come  through  all  the  way  from  Seralvo  —  everybody 
cleared  out.  Like  a  fairy-tale  —  the  Sleeping-Beauty  — 
with  a  difference!"  The  whole  way,  he  said,  their  brigade 
of  Worth's,  which  marched  at  the  head,  had  been  close  be 
hind  a  body  or  bodies  of  Mexican  horse,  Torrejon's  cavalry, 
the  scouts  thought;  they  would  flit  into  view,  hover,  and  van 
ish,  a  mile,  sometimes  less,  ahead,  any  hour  of  the  day; 
never  able,  apparently,  to  make  up  their  minds  to  attack, 
or  to  wait  for  our  charge.  These  were  the  gentlemen  who 
were  to  beat  us  again  and  again,  and  the  whole  army  indulged 
in  a  great  deal  of  merriment  at  their  expense.  I  have  rarely 
seen  men  more  confident  and  gay  on  the  eve  of  action. 

Mr.  Burke,  learning  that  pay-day  had  arrived  during  the 


THE   WARRIOR   LANGUISHES   IN   HIS   TENT     407 

month  of  his  absence,  took  an  opportunity  to  present  his 
claim  at  the  paymaster's  department;  when  he  discovered, 
to  his  surprise,  that  Captain  Burke's  money  had  already 
been  handed  over  and  receipted  for  in  due  form  on  the  rolls. 
Burke  was  not  personally  known  to  the  paymaster  —  an 
officer  of  volunteers  like  himself  —  and  however  this  mistake 
had  occurred  (something  which  was  never  wholly  cleared 
up)  there  was  at  the  moment  no  way  of  correcting  it,  in  fact 
no  time  for  formalities  of  any  sort,  as  we  were  about  to 
march.  The  captain  returned  to  his  command  not  at  all  dis 
turbed  in  mind;  we  had  more  important  matters  to  occupy 
us.  About  ten  o'clock  of  the  next  morning  —  September 
19  —  as  we  were  advancing  rapidly  in  close  order,  Burke's 
company  being  near  the  head  of  the  column,  all  at  once,  with 
a  very  loud,  deep,  and  thunderous  sound,  a  cannon  at  Mon 
terey  began  to  roar. 

There  was  a  little  pause,  and  then  two  more  reports,  and 
the  order  to  halt  was  given.  We  were  all  very  much  excited. 
At  intervals  during  the  morning,  as  we  wound  about  between 
the  hills,  the  town  had  come  in  sight,  with  its  roofs  and  the 
cathedral  spire  precisely  defined  in  that  clean  air;  and  now 
our  advance  must  have  got  within  range.  Somebody  said 
that  the  guns  were  twelve-pounders  firing  from  the  citadel, 
and  that  one  shot  had  gone  within  ten  feet  of  General  Taylor 
as  he  rode  with  his  staff  in  the  First  Division.  We  were 
presently  ordered  into  camp  in  a  grove  of  trees  near  by; 
the  engineers  went  forward  and  the  Rangers  for  a  reconnois- 
sance;  all  day  long  —  a  clear  and  hot  day  —  we  heard  the 
heavy  guns  and  the  musketry  from  the  city. 


CHAPTER  VI 
IN  WHICH  THE   FIRST   OHIO  BEHAVES   WELL  UNDER  FIRE 

THE  Mexican  War,  as  has  already  been  noted,  fared  most 
magnificently  at  the  hands  of  contemporary  historians  who 
spared  no  adjectives  nor  exclamation  points  in  the  glorify 
ing  of  our  American  arms;  and  in  spite  of  them,  the  same  war, 
as  has  also  been  noted,  is  all  but  forgot,  or  arouses  only  the 
slenderest  of  attention  to-day.  For  either  or  both  of  which 
reasons,  it  seems  scarcely  worth  while  for  the  present  writer 
to  add  his  brick  to  the  heap,  and  tax  the  souls  of  his  readers 
with  dreary  details.  The  siege  of  Monterey  shall  be  dis 
missed  as  speedily  as  possible  in  this  history;  and  let  it  be 
said  once  for  all  of  Captain  Burke's  performances,  both  here 
and  elsewhere,  that  they  were  creditable  to  himself,  but  no 
more  dashing  nor  glorious  than  those  of  a  thousand  other 
brave  and  upright  men  —  among  whom  I  make  bold  to  class 
him. 

The  city  of  Monterey,  as  you  may  read  in  a  dozen  accounts, 
lay  along  a  curve  of  the  river  San  Juan  in  a  pretty  strong 
natural  position.  It  was  defended  on  our  right  by  a  large, 
lofty  building,  the  Bishop's  palace,  turned  into  a  fort  with 
guns  and  protecting  works,  which  stood  —  and  still  stands, 
such  was  the  original  strength  and  thickness  of  its  walls  — 
on  a  height  commanding  the  western  approaches  of  the  city; 
the  Citadel,  about  midway  of  the  northern  front  of  the  town, 
a  formidable  piece  of  fortification,  built  of  black  stone,  cover 
ing  two  or  three  acres  with  its  bastions  and  outworks, 
and  proportionately  furnished  with  guns  and  men.  As  far 
as  I  know,  setting  aside  the  planting  of  two  howitzers  — 
the  only  siege  guns  we  had  —  in  a  ravine  facing  it,  there  was 
no  attack,  nor  even  any  demonstration  made  against  this 
place;  and  I  was  afterwards  told  by  Major-general  Quit- 
man,  that,  happening  to  be  with  Taylor  at  the  time  of  his 
giving  the  order  for  Worth's  advance,  the  general  turned  to 

408 


THE   FIRST   OHIO   UNDER   FIRE  409 

his  council,  and  said,  with  a  smile:  "I  think,  gentlemen, 
we'll  let  the  Black  Fort  alone  for  a  while.  We  don't  want  to 
bite  off  more  than  we  can  chew."  At  the  eastern  end  of  the 
town  there  were  three  strong  redoubts,  and  a  fortified  bridge 
across  a  little  stream  which  entered  the  San  Juan  thereabouts; 
besides  all  this  the  city  proper,  which  was  built,  as  if  in  the 
intention  to  resist  a  siege,  of  stout  low  one-story  stone  houses, 
was  barricaded  from  wall  to  wall  and  street  to  street  up  to 
the  very  doors  of  the  cathedral  in  the  main  plaza,  and  a  great 
many  unofficial  defenders  took  a  hand  in  the  fight  from  be 
hind  these  impromptu  fortifications. 

The  issue  of  this  conflict  is  well  known.  With  an  equal 
force,  with  the  moral  and  physical  advantage  of  an  en 
trenched  position,  with  a  chain  of  defences  so  strong  that  one 
of  them  was  never  attempted,  and  another  (the  Diablo 
redoubt)  held  out  victoriously  until  he  himself  withdrew 
its  garrison,  with  a  populace  which  lent  him  all  possible 
encouragement  and  support,  with  supplies  to  have  lasted 
for  weeks  —  with  all  this  General  Pedro  de  Ampudia,  at  the 
end  of  three  days'  fighting,  gave  up  Monterey.  I  do  not 
like  to  picture  the  feelings  of  the  gallant  men  who  served 
under  him;  there  seems  to  be  something  in  the  Spanish  char 
acter,  a  something  transmitted  to  its  utmost  strain  of  blood, 
that  renders  it  incapable  or  unfit  to  command,  while  most 
prompt,  resolute,  and  courageous  to  obey.  For  let  nobody 
imagine  that  we  effected  a  lodgment  in  the  city  and  got  the 
upper  hand  easily  or  without  resistance;  we  may  have  been 
better  soldiers  than  the  Mexican  rank-and-file,  but  we  were 
no  braver  men. 

The  Ohio  volunteers  figured  only  very  insignificantly  on 
the  first  day  of  the  siege,  in  a  spectacular  showing  towards 
sundown  of  a  few  companies  apiece  from  Twiggs's  and 
Butler's1  corps,  along  a  high  plain  or  shoulder  of  the  moun 
tains,  where  they  could  be  seen  by  the  city  sentinels,  and 
draw  attention  from  Worth's  movement  against  the  Bishop's 
palace.  Our  chance  came  the  next  morning  about  ten 
o'clock  when  the  general  ordered  out  reinforcements  to 
support  Colonel  Garland's  attack  on  the  redoubts  at  the  left. 
Mitchell's  regiment,  with  Major-general  Butler  in  the  front, 
gallantly  leading  his  division  into  action,  pushed  up  between 
the  redoubts  and  the  bridge-head  under  a  severe  fire  which 


410  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  men  stood  up  to  in  good  style;  at  the  same  time  the  other 
brigade  of  volunteers  under  Quitman  charged  and  took 
the  work  farthest  from  us  (the  Teneria),  so  that,  although 
we  were  presently  ordered  to  retire  without  having  indi 
vidually  gained  a  foot,  something  had  been  accomplished 
by  our  presence.  And  a  cavalry  charge  by  the  Mexicans 
following  up  this  withdrawal  (the  sight  of  which  seemed 
to  have  sent  the  enemy  quite  frantic  with  delight!  The 
cathedral  bells  were  ringing,  and  the  lancers  hurrahing 
madly  as  they  came  after  us),  we  took  cover  behind  a  con 
venient  hedge  of  our  old  acquaintance  "that  d — d  chap 
arral,"  whence  Captain  Burke  and  his  associates  delivered 
so  brisk  a  fire  that  the  cavalry  appeared  measurably  satisfied 
to  charge  in  the  opposite  direction.  Burke  came  out  of  this 
engagement  ranking  officer,  his  three  seniors  having  been 
seriously  wounded;  and  the  command  thus  devolving  upon 
him,  he  brought  off  what  remained  of  the  regiment,  which 
had  suffered  heavily,  in  a  tolerably  well-ordered  and  soldierly 
manner,  and,  as  to  himself,  without  a  scratch. 

The  22d  the  division  spent  resting  in  camp  at  Walnut 
Springs  about  three  miles  from  the  city,  and  under  water 
instead  of  fire,  for  it  rained  hard  and  continuously;  and 
Burke,  who,  as  I  have  said,  was  unhurt  and  in  excellent  trim, 
chafed  a  good  deal  at  this  inaction.  Towards  evening  an 
express  came  in  with  the  news  that  Worth  had  stormed  the 
last  of  the  defences  on  the  western  heights,  and  their  guns 
were  now  trained  on  the  city  itself.  Captain  Burke,  hearing 
at  the  same  time  that  General  Quitman,  now  our  division 
commander,  Butler  having  been  wounded  the  previous  day, 
was  to  be  sent  to  relieve  the  north  front  lines,  went  to  him 
personally  with  a  request  to  accompany  his  command;  the 
general,  with  that  kindness  and  sympathy  which  almost  from 
their  first  meeting  he  always  manifested  towards  the  young 
man,  responded  by  allowing  him  to  go  on  his  own  staff  as  a 
volunteer  aide.  But  the  struggle  was  already  all  but  over; 
during  the  night  Ampudia  withdrew  his  troops  from  the 
outworks,  concentrating  in  the  city  and  citadel,  and  at  day 
break  we  occupied  without  resistance  the  forts  of  the  Diablo 
and  La  Libertad,  where  there  had  been  such  carnage  on  our 
first  visit,  a  little  more  than  twenty-four  hours  before. 
Thence  the  Americans  commenced  a  forward  movement  into 


THE   FIRST   OHIO   UNDER   FIRE  411 

the  city,  which  presently  became  a  hand-to-hand  and  house- 
to-house  fight.  We  had  to  batter  down  and  tunnel  through 
one  wall  after  another,  and  found  every  shop  and  shanty  a 
fort.  They  made  a  most  stubborn  opposition.  The  firing 
was  very  severe  although  nothing  like  what  it  had  been  on  the 
21st,  except  at  one  street  running  directly  from  the  cathedral, 
where  there  was  a  hot  fusillade  through  its  whole  length. 
Burke  reached  this  place  in  company  with  a  Captain  Henry 
of  the  3d  Infantry  whom  he  had  fallen  in  with,  I  don't  re 
member  where  —  at  the  time  neither  one  knew  the  other's 
name;  and  it  was  here  while  they  were  debating  the  next 
move  that  Burke  saw  the  American  commander  for  the  first 
time  near  at  hand.  "Look!  There's  the  general  —  that's 
Taylor  now!"  his  companion  exclaimed.1 

He  was  in  the  town  with  his  staff,  on  foot,  walking  about, 
perfectly  indifferent  to  the  danger,  in  uniform,  of  course, 
but,  as  I  remember,  with  a  large  gray  slouched  or  shade  hat 
on  his  head,  and  a  bandanna  knotted  around  his  neck  in 
" Ranger"  fashion.  He  crossed  the  street  where  there  was 
such  a  furious  fire  at  a  walk,  and  by  every  chance  should  have 
been  shot  down.  We  ran  over  with  some  of  the  men,  and 
Henry  began  an  agitated  remonstrance,  something  about 
the  general's  life  being  too  valuable  to  be  exposed  so  reck 
lessly,  and  so  on,  to  which  General  Taylor  replied:  "Take 
that  axe  and  break  down  that  door!" 

I  have  since  seen  many  flaming  lithographs  and  engravings 
of  General  Taylor's  triumphal  entry  into  Monterey,  and 
never  without  a  laugh.  He  is  always  on  a  caracoling  white 
horse,  he  brandishes  a  sword,  he  is  bedizened  with  plumes 
and  gold  braid;  the  Mexicans  reel  before  him,  heaps  of 
cannon  and  corpses  encumber  his  path,  the  wounded  feebly 
cheer  him  on.  These  are  noble  conceptions  —  and  about 
as  near  the  truth  as  all  such  portrayals  of  war,  about  which 
there  is,  to  my  mind  at  least,  little  fit  to  be  pictured,  or 
altogether  pleasing  to  remember.  When  Burke  obediently 

1  Captain  Henry  afterwards  wrote  a  memoir  of  the  Mexican  War 
in  which  this  incident  is  related  very  much  as  Burke  recollected  it. 
Taylor's  bearing  on  this  occasion  seems  to  have  made  a  profound 
impression  on  both  young  men.  Henry's  book  was  published  by 
Harpers  about  1860,  and  is  probably  still  to  be  had  at  the  libraries. 

—  M.  S.  W. 


412  NATHAN    BURKE 

picked  up  that  axe  and  broke  down  that  door  with  a  smart 
blow  or  two,  there  was  nobody  behind  it  but  a  poor  wretch 
of  an  apothecary  cowering  on  the  floor  of  his  shop  amongst 
his  bottles  and  pill-boxes;  and  his  wife  and  children  came 
and  flung  themselves  at  our  knees  with  wildly  imploring 
gestures.  "Bueno.  Amigo.  Bueno,"  says  our  kind  old 
leader,  patting  the  head  of  the  youngster  nearest  him  re 
assuringly.  I  think  the  scene  and  act  became  him  better 
and  were  more  worthy  of  picturing  than  a  thousand  tri 
umphs. 

That  night  Ampudia  wrote  a  message  of  capitulation  in 
which  he  said  he  had  made  all  the  defence  of  which  the  city 
was  capable,  and  done  all  required  by  military  honor;  it 
was  a  manly  and  straightforward  acknowledgment  of  defeat, 
creating  an  impression  which,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  his  later 
manoeuvres  and  prevarications  thoroughly  effaced.  Officers 
were  appointed  from  both  sides  to  settle  upon  the  terms 
of  surrender.  The  cannon  fell  silent;  the  swords  were  all 
sheathed,  and  everybody  sat  down  with  a  pen  instead,  to  tell 
some  anxious  soul  two  thousand  miles  away  who  did  not 
even  know  when  or  where  a  battle  might  be  going  on,  that 
it  was  all  over,  and  we  were  alive  and  unhurt,  and  poor 
So-and-So  was  gone  —  shot  through  the  lungs  in  the  assault 
on  the  palace  —  and  Such-a-One  would  get  the  colonelcy,  of 
course.  The  surgeons  were  very  busy;  Captain  Burke  set 
to  work  at  his  sad  list  of  dead,  wounded,  and  missing;  and 
his  own  name  was  mentioned  handsomely  in  despatches 
home,  to  his  great  gratification. 

In  this  matter  of  the  capitulation  of  Monterey  our  general 
afterwards  came  in  for  some  of  the  most  unjust  and  ungrate 
ful  criticism,  and  the  harshest  censure  that  ever  any  govern 
ment  bestowed  on  a  faithful  servant.  He  was  condemned 
for  not  pursuing  the  enemy  with  more  speed  and  vigor  when 
the  very  fault-finders  whose  business  it  was  to  provide  him 
with  supplies  and  transportation  had  failed  to  do  so;  for 
not  pressing  the  siege  closer  when  he  had  no  siege  artillery 
nor  entrenching  tools;  for  not  taking  the  entire  Mexican 
army,  officers  and  men,  prisoners  of  war,  when  it  was  as  much 
as  he  or  any  man  could  do  in  that  barren  and  hostile  country 
to  subsist  his  own  men  and  maintain  his  position,  let  alone 
guard  and  care  for  a  troop  of  prisoners  numbering  more  than 


THE   FIRST   OHIO   UNDER   FIRE  413 

his  whole  force;  for  consenting  to  a  cessation  of  hostilities, 
or  treating  with  the  enemy  at  all;  for  suffering  the  garrison 
to  depart  with  the  honors  of  war,  and  the  Mexican  gunners 
to  salute  their  captured  flag.  His  political  opponents  speed 
ily  seized  upon  and  made  capital  out  of  the  administrative 
discontent;  and  when  a  resolution  of  thanks  to  General  Taylor 
and  the  army  was  offered  in  Congress,  it  carried  the  amend 
ment:  "that  nothing  herein  contained  shall  be  construed  into 
an  approbation  of  the  terms  of  capitulation  at  Monterey." 
A  brave  man  who  feels  that  he  has  done  his  duty  may,  per 
haps,  dispense  with  the  approbation  of  his  superiors;  and  as 
to  those  who  have  been  here  called  his  political  opponents, 
General  Taylor  was  at  once  too  strong  and  single  of  heart  to 
heed  their  attacks;  when  the  question  of  his  candidacy  for 
the  Presidency  had  been  broached  to  him  during  the  summer, 
he  wrote  simply,  "I  have  not  the  leisure  to  attend  to  it  now. 
The  war  demands  every  moment  of  my  present  time."  It 
was  not  the  answer  his  correspondents  would  have  got 
from  that  able  wielder  of  the  pen,  General  Scott;  and  indeed, 
that  hero  exhibited  afterwards  in  his  autobiography  —  and 
may  have  at  the  time,  for  all  we  knew  —  the  utter  futility 
of  the  Monterey  expedition,  its  waste  of  time,  men,  and 
money,  and  the  meagreness  of  its  results.  "Cui  bono?" 
says  he  elegantly  and  appropriately,  displaying  throughout 
his  masterly  work  a  splendid  command  of  the  Latin  primer 
and  those  of  several  other  languages.  And  this  opinion 
being  shared  by  the  President  and  Secretary  of  War,  and 
Taylor's  success  having  fully  demonstrated  his  incompe- 
tency,  they  presently  detached  from  him  a  considerable  part 
of  his  army,  Patterson's  command,  and  ordered  it  elsewhere 
without  the  formality  of  consulting  our  general,  or  even  of 
notifying  him;  and  followed  this  up  by  despatching  Scott 
to  the  Rio  Grande  with  authority  to  help  himself  to  prac 
tically  all  the  regulars  and  almost  all  of  the  seasoned  volun 
teer  troops  remaining. 

All  these  events,  however,  went  on  more  or  less  over  the 
heads,  as  it  were,  of  the  army;  certainly  outside  the  sphere 
of  such  small  fry  as  Captain  Burke.  The  rumors  of  dis 
satisfaction  at  Washington,  when  they  finally  reached  us, 
concrete  in  newspapers  and  letters,  caused  a  kind  of  angry 
bewilderment  and  dismay.  What  did  the  President  want  ? 


414  NATHAN   BURKE 

What  did  the  public  want  ?  Hadn't  we  taken  Monterey  ? 
From  our  point  of  view  it  was  almost  ludicrously  unreason 
able  to  find  fault  with  the  general  for  the  particular  way  in 
which  he  had  got  possession  of  a  city,  so  long  as  he  had  ac 
tually  got  possession  of  it.  At  the  distance  whence  these 
comments  were  made,  how  could  their  authors  be  acquainted 
with  all  the  circumstances  ?  We  could  not  make  out  what 
all  the  talk  was  about,  and  were  inclined  to  put  it  down  to 
political  chicanery,  Whig  or  Democratic  intriguing.  The 
officers  said  to  one  another  that  we  should  like  to  have  some 
of  these  bawling,  blatherskiting,  cheap-John  stump-speakers 
and  petty  demagogues  down  here  in  Mexico  a  while;  we 
should  like  to  see  how  one  of  them  would  have  invested 
Monterey,  reduced  the  Citadel,  and  taken  everybody  pris 
oners  !  We  ourselves  saw  the  Mexican  army  march  away 
without  resentment;  it  is  only  the  non-fighters  who  are  for 
ever  shrieking  for  the  enemy's  blood.  Burke  himself  was 
occupied  the  first  few  days  after  the  surrender  with  a  matter 
to  which  he  should  have  attended  before,  and  that  now  gave 
him  a  serious  concern;  for  when  he  made  up  that  list,  enter 
ing  our  losses  with  a  grave  heart,  Lieutenant  George  Ducey 
was  among  the  missing. 

The  truth  is,  rejoining  his  regiment  the  day  and  almost  the 
hour  when  it  marched,  Captain  Burke,  after  some  hurried 
inquiries,  finding  that  nobody  knew  exactly  where  George 
was,  but  that  everybody  had  "just  seen  him,"  or  seen  him 
yesterday,  or  thought  he  was  "somewhere"  -  the  captain,  I 
say,  gave  him  up  for  the  moment,  taking  no  further  trouble 
about  George,  whom,  besides,  he  could  not  very  well  have 
sought  in  a  body  of  several  hundred  men,  which  itself  was  only 
a  part  of  another  body  of  several  thousand.  And  let  us  be 
frank,  my  friends.  Did  Nat  care  greatly  about  seeing  George  ? 
He  must  thank  the  young  man  for  those  kind-hearted  atten 
tions  at  Matamoros  —  and  I  fear  that  Captain  Nathan  was 
not  of  so  free  and  noble  a  spirit  as  to  find  that  a  pleasant  duty. 
I  have  said  it  before,  the  man  is  an  exalted  character  who  can 
take  a  favor  well ;  nor  would  it  ever  be  easy  to  take  one  from 
somebody  we  dislike.  No,  I  think  Burke  was  a  little  glad 
not  to  meet  George  Ducey  at  once;  and  the  stirring  events 
of  succeeding  hours  put  the  lieutenant  out  of  his  mind  al 
together.  Now  it  was  borne  in  upon  him  with  a  growing 


THE   FIRST  OHIO   UNDER  FIRE  415 

anxiety  that  a  very  grave  thing  had  occurred  —  no  graver,  to 
be  sure,  than  the  loss  by  death  or  otherwise  of  scores  of  our 
men  —  but  he  knew  George  —  George  was  one  of  his  own 
company  —  and  there  was  the  poor  mother  at  home  perhaps 
on  her  knees  at  that  moment  praying  for  her  boy.  Burke 
went  about  the  search  in  good  earnest  —  lo,  this  time  nobody 
had  seen  Lieutenant  Ducey,  nobody  knew  anything  about 
him,  even  those  who  had  assured  the  captain  that  they  had 
seen  him  " somewhere"  shortly  before  the  fight,  now  declared 
he  had  been  missing  for  a  week !  Long  before  we  got  to  Mon 
terey,  they  said  earnestly,  he  had  disappeared,  before  Marin, 
before  Seralvo. 

Burke  took  these  statements,  which  were  made  in  perfect 
good  faith,  with  allowances,  for  the  confusion  and  hurry  of 
the  late  happenings;  he  himself  felt  as  if  the  three  days  of  the 
siege  had  been  as  many  months,  as  if  he  had  been  away  from 
home  a  year;  and  could  not  remember  whether  such  and  such 
a  thing  had  befallen  on  Sunday  or  Monday,  or  this  week  or 
last.  George,  he  thought,  could  not  have  been  missing  on 
the  march;  it  would  have  been  remarked;  an  officer  does  not 
stray  like  a  private.  He  was  not  in  hospital,  for  that  was 
easily  and  definitely  settled  at  once  by  inquiry  of  the  proper 
officials;  he  was  not  with  the  regiment,  but  he  might  be  else 
where  in  the  army;  he  might  have  volunteered  as  an  aide  like 
Burke  himself,  or  gone  on  a  reconnoissance,  and  been  shot  or 
taken,  or  he  might  — 

The  objection  to  all  these  guesses  was  one  which  Burke 
shrank  from  discussing  with  anybody,  and  rebuked  himself 
for  entertaining.  He  could  not  imagine  George  steadfast  in 
any  position  of  danger,  voluntarily  facing  bodily  harm.  Nat 
believed  from  the  bottom  of  his  heart  that  if  ever  a  coward 
existed  on  earth,  it  was  George  Ducey;  George  on  a  reconnois 
sance  or  taking  part  in  an  attack  was  inconceivable.  Yet  it 
is  impossible  to  say  what  even  a  cowardly  man  may  do  at 
times;  and  if  his  body  was  not  lying  in  some  of  the  hastily 
dug  grave  trenches  about  the  city,  in  some  ravine,  corn-field, 
or  copse  of  chaparral,  then  where  was  he?  The  captain  felt 
a  sting  of  remorse  when  he  remembered  how  sharp  had  been 
his  last  conscious  words  with  George,  and  the  poor  young  fel 
low's  kindness  later;  after  all,  what  need  to  have  been  so 
harsh  with  him  ?  What  could  you  expect  of  George  Ducey  ? 


416  NATHAN   BURKE 

Truly,  his  ridiculous  attempt  at  blackmail  was  a  little  worse 
than  anything  Burke  had  ever  known  him  to  do  before; 
hitherto,  his  lying  and  bragging  and  borrowing  had  never 
really  harmed  anybody  much  but  himself;  it  was  only  natural 
and  inevitable  that  such  a  character  should  deteriorate;  but 
even  so,  and  although  George  had  no  earthly  claim  on  him, 
it  seemed  to  Burke  that  old  acquaintance,  common  memories, 
ordinary  humanity,  the  regard  he  felt  for  the  rest  of  the 
family  imposed  a  sort  of  responsibility  on  him.  It  was  as 
little  Francie  had  said  long  ago :  somebody  must  look  out  for 
George.  Dimly  Nathan  began  to  perceive  the  immemorial 
weapon  of  the  weak:  help  me,  or  you  push  me  down  hill 
—  take  care  of  me,  or  on  your  own  head  be  my  undoing  ! 

Moved  by  all  this,  the  captain  prosecuted  his  search  with 
such  vigor,  as  to  give  some  color  to  that  old  report  of  his 
kinship  with  the  missing  man ;  and  his  task,  ironically  enough, 
was  not  rendered  any  easier  by  his  brother-officers  who,  out 
of  the  consideration  they  thought  due  to  Ducey's  relative, 
did  not  always  answer  his  questions  as  plainly  as  they  might, 
or  tried  so  hard  to  soften  their  statements  that  they  ended  by 
being  valueless.  However,  it  was  presently  established  be 
yond  doubt  that  Lieutenant  Ducey  had  not  been  with  his  own 
regiment  or  brigade  nor  volunteered  on  any  other  service, 
nor  been  seen  in  any  part  of  the  field  during  the  three  days' 
fighting;  at  some  time  which  nobody  seemed  able  to  fix, 
Lieutenant  Ducey  had  vanished,  literally  bag  and  baggage, 
for  none  of  his  clothes  and  possessions,  even  to  that  Mexican 
saddle  about  which  Burke  had  rated  him  so  soundly,  could 
be  found;  with  so  many  thieving  Mexicans  about,  this  was 
not  so  surprising.  And  it  was  in  fact  more  than  likely  that 
some  of  these  latter  gentry  could  have  accounted  for  the  un 
fortunate  boy's  disappearance.  Burke  thought  with  horror 
of  the  letter  he  must  sit  down  and  write  to  the  family  at  home; 
if  George  had  fallen  in  battle,  it  would  have  been  bad  enough, 
but  in  all  probability  robbed  and  murdered,  and  his  body  cast 
aside  for  the  buzzards  or  the  lean,  starveling  dogs  —  Merci 
ful  God,  what  an  end ! 

"Not  your  cousin  —  Ducey  not  your  cousin?"  said  an 
officer,  to  whom  Burke  was  confiding  this  gloomy  view,  in 
astonishment,  "Why,  what  relation  was  he,  then?  " 

"None  at  all,  I  tell  you/'  said  Nat,  impatiently;   "I  don't 


THE   FIRST   OHIO   UNDER   FIRE  417 

know  how  that  story  got  around.  We  come  from  the  same 
place,  that's  all.'' 

"Well,  but  he  was  your  friend  —  you  were  great  friends,  of 
course?"  asked  the  other,  cautiously. 

"No,  not  such  very  great  friends,  only  —  I've  known  him 
all  his  life,  you  see.  I  know  the  family  very  well,  and  I've 
got  to  find  out  something  about  him  —  I've  got  to  write  home 
and  tell  his  mother  —  poor  woman!  It's  an  awful  business 
—  if  we  could  only  find  the  —  the  body,  it  would  be  a  kind 
of  comfort  to  her,  maybe,  but  this  way  - 

"Oh,  so  that's  the  reason  you  were  making  such  a  fuss/' 
said  the  other,  with  a  perceptible  change  of  manner;  "you  — 
you  seemed  to  take  it  so  to  heart,  I  didn't  like  to  say  anything 
before  —  and  of  course  it  is  an  awfully  sad  thing  for  any 
young  fellow  to  go  that  way,"  he  interpolated  hastily;  "and 
I'm  sorry  for  his  mother,  but  Ducey  himself  —  why,  I'd  just 
as  lief  say  right  out,  he's  no  great  loss.  Don't  like  to  talk 
about  a  dead  man  —  but  it's  no  more  than  I'd  have  said 
while  he  was  alive.  I  knew  Ducey  pretty  well.  If  he's  got 
killed,  it  wasn't  fighting;  he'd  be  much  more  likely  to  drop 
down  dead  from  heart-disease  running  away!  Say,  I  guess 
you  didn't  hear  that  story  about  him  and  Crittenden?  You 
say  you've  been  in  hospital,  and  then,  of  course,  if  people 
think  you're  his  cousin,  they  won't  be  so  liable  to  tell  you." 

This  is  a  sample  of  the  plain  talk  Captain  Burke  succeeded 
in  getting  when  he  had  industriously  removed  the  impression 
about  his  connection  with  George;  he  was  amazed  to  find 
what  a  character  the  young  man  had  become  in  the  camp. 
The  story  about  him  and  Crittenden,  which  Nat  had  missed 
so  far,  appeared  to  have  circulated  throughout  the  whole 
army,  and  was  actually  the  last  thing  anybody  remembered 
definitely  about  George.  Mr.  Thomas  L.  Crittenden  of  Ken 
tucky  was  one  of  a  number  of  young  gentlemen  who  were  to 
be  met  with  almost  everywhere  during  the  Mexican  cam 
paigns,  moving  with  our  armies,  living  at  their  own  charges, 
without  official  rank,  and,  though  not  in  the  service  formally, 
volunteering  whenever  a  volunteer  was  needed,  and  perform 
ing  deeds  of  as  much  risk  and  difficulty  as  if  they  had  held  a 
dozen  commissions;  Mr.  Crittenden  himself  having  assumed 
the  duties  of  General  Taylor's  aide  during  the  engagements 
just  past,  a  post  wherein  he  displayed  the  utmost  gallantry, 

2E 


418  NATHAN   BURKE 

so  that  our  general  (who  was  always  most  scrupulous  and 
painstaking  to  render  honor  where  honor  was  due)  put  his 
name  in  the  despatches.  Burke  met  him  and  liked  him  ex 
ceedingly;  he  was  a  long,  tall,  lank  young  man,  with  a  very 
gentle  voice  and  manners,  a  great  talent  for  playing  cards, 
and  none  at  all  for  playing  the  banjo,  upon  which,  neverthe 
less,  he  liked  to  thrum  by  the  hour,  always  carrying  one  about 
with  him.  The  gist  of  the  Ducey  story,  as  near  as  Burke 
could  ever  make  out,  was  this :  Lieutenant  Ducey,  being  in  a 
company  while  Mr.  Crittenden  was  executing  a  voluntary  on 
his  instrument,  and  considering  himself  a  judge  of  music, 
began  by  going  through  a  great  many  satirically  significant 
nods,  winks,  shrugs,  and  other  pantomime  to  express  his 
amused  disapproval.  I  do  not  know  what  else  he  did  or  said, 
but  Mr.  Crittenden  was  reported  to  have  borne  it  all  with 
commendable  patience  and  good-humor  until  George  finally 
remarked  with  an  open  sneer :  — 

"What  a  wonderfully  good  ear  you  have  for  music.  Mr. 
Crittenden!" 

To  which  the  other  replied  mildly:  "I  have,  sir,  and  some 
people  have  wonderfully  good  noses  for  pulling!"  Saying 
which,  Mr.  Crittenden  of  Kentucky  laid  aside  his  banjo,  and 
rising  up,  very  rapidly  and  dexterously  performed  that  feat 
upon  the  person  of  Lieutenant  Ducey,  to  the  entertainment 
of  all  the  spectators. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  this  occurrence  would  be 
kept  quiet,  or  that  either  of  the  principals  would  be  allowed 
to  forget  it.  The  fashion  of  taking  a  gentleman's  revenge 
for  an  insult,  bloody  and  foolish  as  it  was,  had  not  gone  out 
with  Mr.  Clay's  defeat  for  the  Presidency;  but  Burke  was  not 
surprised  to  hear  that  Crittenden,  although  holding  himself 
in  readiness  for  a  challenge,  had  not  received  one.  George 
had  been  content  to  sit  down  with  his  pulled  nose,  apparently. 
The  affair  had  taken  place,  they  said,  shortly  after  the  army 
marched  from  Serai vo;  and  some  averred  that  Lieutenant 
Ducey  had  not  been  seen  since.  The  official  account  of  the 
battle  had  long  since  gone  home;  and  that  passage  beginning 
•ominously,  "I  regret  to  report—  '  was  doubtless  known 
word  for  word  to  many  a  sad  heart  to  whom  the  much-decried 
terms  of  the  capitulation  seemed  but  a  trivial  matter  in 
comparison,  when  Captain  Burke  reluctantly  sat  down  to 


THE   FIRST   OHIO   UNDER   FIRE  419 

confirm  to  Mrs.  Ducey  the  tidings  of  her  son's  disappearance0 
He  told  her  the  truth  as  gently  as  it  could  be  told;  that 
George  could  not  be  found;  that  the  chance  of  his  being  alive 
was  one  in  a  hundred;  it  would  have  been  no  mercy  to  have 
aroused  any  sort  of  hope  in  the  poor  mother's  heart.  Burke 
could  honestly  speak  with  regret  of  the  dead  man;  he  dwelt 
on  George's  kindness  to  him  in  his  sickness,  tried  to  recall 
the  times  when  George  had  talked  about  her  and  home,  the 
things  he  had  said;  perhaps  the  captain  furbished  up  these 
instances  a  little  —  who  would  not?  —  yet  George  was  really 
fond  of  his  mother.  And  ended  with  some  words  of  sym 
pathy,  awkwardly  put,  no  doubt,  yet  sincere.  Mrs.  Ducey 
would  be  wondering  bitterly  why  her  son  had  to  be  taken 
and  a  young  fellow  like  Burke  without  father  or  mother  to 
mourn  him  spared,  he  said  to  himself,  as  he  went  out  and 
posted  the  letter. 

The  writing  of  this  was  so  dismal  a  business  that  Nat  was 
glad  enough  to  encounter  and  join  half  a  dozen  light-hearted 
lads  —  one  of  them  had  got  a  bullet  through  the  thigh  in  the 
fight  at  the  bridge-head,  and  was  limping  about  on  crutches 
with  the  jauntiest  air  in  the  world!  —  on  leave  from  the  camp 
at  Walnut  Springs  where  General  Taylor  still  had  his  head 
quarters,  and  bent  on  driving  dull  care  away  in  Monterey. 
The  city  was  tolerably  well  provided  for  that  purpose;  al 
ready,  in  the  short  month  elapsed  since  its  fall,  there  had  ap 
peared  the  advance-guard  of  that  other  American  invasion, 
which  forever  followed  in  the  trail  of  our  army;  those  beauties 
arrayed  more  richly  than  the  lilies  of  the  field  and  who,  like 
the  lilies,  neither  toiled  nor  spun  for  a  living;  those  frock- 
coated,  tall-hatted,  impenetrable,  reserved  gentlemen  with 
diamonds  on  their  fingers,  pistols  in  their  hip  pockets,  and  an 
amazing  facility  at  manipulating  playing-cards  —  all,  all 
were  here,  the  old  familiar  faces.  The  billiard-halls  were 
running  night  and  day;  the  cock-pits  were  in  operation; 
there  was  another  "  Grand  Spanish  Saloon,"  I  swear,  in  full 
blast,  not  to  mention  half  a  hundred  lesser  ones.  The 
theatre  was  open,  the  bands  played  in  the  plaza,  our  friends 
the  Rangers  were  galloping  in  and  out  as  of  old,  the  volun 
teers  were  getting  drunk  and  disgracing  the  service  and  being 
haled  oft7  to  their  regimental  caboose  by  details  of  sober 
ones  —  vogue  la  galere !  Somebody  had  heard  that  there 


420  NATHAN   BURKE 

was  a  circus  established  in  the  town  —  a  real  circus-troupe 
from  the  United  States!  Let's  all  go  to  the  circus  —  here, 
Burke,  don't  you  want  to  see  the  circus?  —  Hi  there,  you  fel 
low,  six  —  seven  —  eight  tickets  to  the  circus! 

This  entertainment  was  quartered  in  the  bull-ring  at  the 
Plaza  of  San  Antonio  over  towards  the  western  part  of  town ; 
the  enemy's  mortar-battery  had  been  planted  there  the  night 
of  the  23d,  and  was  still  in  position  although  quite  lost  to 
view  amongst  the  gilt-and-crimson  circus-wagons  parked  in 
the  open  space  around  it.  We  got  there  just  in  time  for  the 
"Grand  Entree,"  and  as  the  parade  filed  in,  brass  band,  pie 
bald  horses,  lovely  ladies  in  velvet  and  tinsel  and  delicately 
flopping  ballet-skirts,  the  Bounding  Jockey,  the  India-rubber 
Man  (with  feats  on  the  slack  rope),  the  Hindoo  Juggler,  the 
celebrated  monkey  Dandy  Jack  riding  the  equally  celebrated 
trick  pony  Comanche,  Captain  Burke  recognized  to  his  vast 
surprise  and  amusement  his  acquaintance  Mr.  Edward 
Badger,  limber-legged,  in  the  loose  flowing  Pierrot  costume 
and  peaked  hat  affected  by  clowns  of  that  era,  striding  hu 
morously  along,  exchanging  facetiae  with  the  ringmaster,  and 
tremendously  popular  with  the  crowd.  "I'd  r-r-rather-r-r-r 
be  a  DOG  -  "  !  Burke  thought  it  was  something  of  a  come 
down  for  that  ornament  to  the  "  legitimate  " ;  but  in  this  view 
he  was  mistaken.  Badger  had  probably  never  enjoyed  so 
much  distinction  in  his  life;  and  his  song:  — 

"  If  you  like  them,  why,  it's  nothing  to  me, 
But  these  are  some  things  I  don't  like  to  see  I 
I  don't  like  to  see !  " 

had  already  been  taken  up,  sung,  whistled,  hummed  by  every 
American  in  Monterey  and  the  camp.  Many  were  the 
things  and  various  that  Mr.  Badger  didn't  like  to  see;  he  had 
a  hit  at  everything  and  everybody  connected  with  the  army 
from  General  Taylor  down,  and  was  kept  shouting  verse  after 
verse  until  he  was  hoarse  as  a  crow,  and  the  refrain  bellowed 
in  chorus  made  the  stanchions  of  the  canvas  roof  to  quiver 
where  they  stood.  Badger  winked,  capered,  and  made  faces 
with  as  good  a  will  as  if  he  had  never  dreamed  of  Hamlet; 
and  remarking  many  acquaintances  in  the  martial  audience 
to  whom  he  had  been  well  known  at  Matamoros,  cut  a  few 
original  jokes,  not  very  funny,  perhaps,  but  much  more 


THE   FIRST   OHIO   UNDER   FIRE  421 

keenly  appreciated  than  all  his  clown's  classics.  As,  for  in 
stance,  when  he  mysteriously  accosted  the  ringmaster  with 
the  inquiry,  Was  Mr.  Thomas  L.  Crittenden  of  Kentucky 
present?  "No,  sir,  Mr.  Crittenden  is  not  here,  sir.  Mr. 
Crittenden  has  gone  north  with  General  Taylor's  despatches, 
sir,"  which  was  true;  but  when  the  applause  which  the  mere 
mention  of  Taylor's  name  always  brought  forth  had  died 
down,  the  clown,  with  a  wonderful  pantomime  of  relief  and 
thankfulness,  lugged  out  a  monstrous  false  nose  and  clapped 
it  into  place  on  his  countenance  —  " It's  safe!"  says  Badger, 
tapping  this  organ  happily.  "  It's  safe ! "  A  witticism  which 
was  received  so  heartily  that  his  concluding :  — 

"  If  you  like  him,  why,  it's  nothing  to  me, 
But  he's  a  young  man  that  I  don't  want  to  see ! " 

was  completely  drowned  out  by  the  din.  The  Mexicans  in 
the  rear  seats  stared  and  listened,  uncomprehending,  jabber 
ing  among  themselves;  I  never  saw  a  similar  gathering  of 
their  nation  so  uproarious  even  when  a  favorite  torero  took 
his  stand  to  despatch  the  bull;  we  are  apt  to  look  down  upon 
the  southern  races  for  their  supposed  excitability  and  want 
of  self-control,  but  I  doubt  if  the  shoe  is  not  once  in  a  while 
on  the  other  foot. 

After  the  performance  Burke,  much  interested  in  this 
development  of  Mr.  Badger's  career,  went  down,  and  find 
ing  a  small  boy,  one  of  the  troupe  —  with  a  withered  little 
anxious  face,  and  a  Mexican  zarape  shrugged  about  his  lean 
stunted  shoulders  over  the  spangles  and  fleshings  —  who  was 
diligently  selling  candies  at  the  entrance,  suborned  him 
for  a  few  pennies  to  guide  him  to  the  clown's  lodgings. 
Edward  roomed  in  a  house  near  by  with  some  of  his 
professional  brethren;  and  all  this  crew  of  Tom  Tumbles 
were  just  sitting  down  to  their  dinner  when  the  captain  ar 
rived,  Badger  with  his  chalk-blanched  face  and  soiled  white 
blouse  and  pantaloons  which  he  had  not  yet  removed.  He 
took  his  face  out  of  a  jug  of  pulque  to  salute  the  guest  — 
"What  ho,  Burke!  Fighting  Nat,1  hey?  Come  in  —  sit 
down  —  fetch  a  seat,  somebody  —  make  room  for  the  cap- 

1  This  senseless  sobriquet  was  bestowed  on  Burke  after  the  Mon 
terey  fight;  and  he  has  never  since  got  rid  of  it.  —  N.  B. 


422  NATHAN    BURKE 

tain  there  between  you!"  Nothing  could  exceed  his  hos 
pitality;  I  believe  he  was  genuinely  glad  to  see  the  other; 
he  had  heard,  he  said,  that  Burke  had  gone  through  the 
siege  unhurt,  and  congratulated  him  warmly.  The  Jeffer- 
sons?  No,  they  were  not  with  the  company;  they  had  gone 
back  to  the  States,  as  they  intended.  For  himself  —  as  you 
see!  He  introduced  Burke  to  the  others  —  to  the  India- 
rubber  Man,  to  the  Hindoo  Juggler  —  who  spoke  Eng 
lish  with  a  remarkably  strong  Tipperary  accent  for  a 
Hindoo  —  to  the  ringmaster  and  Mrs.  Ringmaster,  the  par 
ents  of  the  candy-selling  boy  —  the  captain  met  them  all ; 
and  he  found  them,  contrary  to  his  previous  ideas,  most 
honest,  kindly,  and  respectable  people.  They  looked  up  a 
little  to  Badger  who,  as  he  was  rather  fond  of  telling,  had 
once  acted  with  Macready —  "This  was  the  only  thing  that 
presented  itself  —  of  course  I  have  other  positions  in  view, 
but  it  will  take  me  some  time  to  decide,"  he  told  his  friend 
leniently,  in  private;  "and  in  the  meanwhile,  a  man  must 
live,  eh?" 

Burke  felt  some  reasonable  doubts  that  this  happy-go- 
lucky  artist  had  anything  secure  "in  view"  at  all,  but  he  did 
not  voice  them.  Badger  and  he  sat  together  on  one  of  the 
circus-chests  and  smoked  Mexican  cigars  and  talked  an  hour 
during  the  clown's  scant  leisure.  It  was  at  the  end  of  the  in 
terview  that  the  latter  said  suddenly,  —  it  was  the  first  time 
he  had  mentioned  the  subject, —  "Guess  you  don't  hear 
anything  from  Ducey  nowadays,  hey,  Captain?"  "Hear 
anything?"  said  Burke,  a  little  shocked;  "why,  you  don't 
know  —  I  thought  maybe  you  didn't  know  —  but  he  —  he's 
dead,  poor  fellow.  That  is,  he's  missing,  it's  the  same  thing 
practically;  he  hasn't  been  heard  of  since  we  took  the  place; 
it  must  have  happened  some  time  during  the  siege  or  right 
before." 

"Yes,  I  know,  I  heard  all  that,"  said  Badger,  eying  him, 
quite  unimpressed;  "but  that's  not  what  they're  saying  now 
—  it's  all  over  the  camp,  you  know.  They  say  he  nipped 
somebody's  pay,  and  vamosed  with  it  —  cleared  out  for  parts 
unknown  —  scared  blue.  Why,  you  don't  mean  to  say  you 
hadn't  heard  that?" 


CHAPTER  VII 
IN  WHICH  THE  AMERICAN  ARMY  MOVES  ON  TAMPICO 

IT  was,  I  believe,  about  the  last  of  October,  and  the  "Army 
of  Occupation"  (which  we  learned  from  stray  and  belated 
newspapers  was  our  high-sounding  official  title)  had  been 
established  at  Monterey  some  six  weeks,  when  those  first 
rumors  of  the  Administration's  dissatisfaction  with  Taylor 
began  to  circulate;  a  curious  sort  of  restlessness  and  activity 
of  speculation  had  already  invaded  us,  everybody  thinking  he 
recognized  the  omens  of  impending  change.  Twice  expresses 
arrived  from  Washington;  General  Patterson  organized  his 
brigade  and  marched  back  to  Camargo.  From  day  to  day 
we  understood  that  General  Wool,  who  had  had  charge  of  an 
expedition  into  Chihuahua,  had  been  heard  from,  and  would 
join  us  shortly  to  concert  some  new  move  with  Taylor.  Still 
he  did  not  come;  and  "When  did  you  hear  from  General 
Wool?  "  got  to  be  a  by- word  in  the  camp,  the  mere  repetition 
of  the  question  one  of  those  pointless  jokes  by  which  at  times 
the  public  mind  appears  to  become  obsessed,  Badger's 
brilliant  pun  that  Wool  wouldn't  come  because  he'd  shrink 
from  the  journey  being  also  repeated  about  as  if  it  were  the 
choicest  possible  piece  of  wit.  Thus  did  we  amuse  ourselves 
in  the  intervals  of  camp  duties,  and  three  or  four  hours  daily 
of  battalion  and  company  drill.  Master  grandson,  or  you 
other  young  gentlemen  under  whose  eyes  this  may  chance 
to  fall,  do  you  think  we  were  a  set  of  thick-skulled,  spiritless 
fellows  with  our  routine  work  and  our  childish  play  ?  Let 
me  tell  you  that  war  is  as  dull  a  business  as  ever  I  heard  of, 
for  all  it  has  furnished  so  many  dazzling  pages  to  history.  I 
have  stood  in  the  breaches  of  a  falling  city,  and  have  drawn  a 
sword  and  shouted  commands  on  the  pitched  field  ;  and  I 
have  also  marched  all  day  in  a  chilling  norther,  with  eyes 
full  of  sand,  a  blistered  heel,  and  a  ration  of  hardtack  and 
raw  bacon,  —  which  of  these  experiences  to  do  you  suppose  I 

423 


424  NATHAN    BURKE 

remember  best?  Why,  the  last,  to  be  sure;  believe  me,  it 
took  the  greater  fortitude. 

Early  in  November,  we  got  notice  definitely  that  the  armis 
tice  agreed  on  at  Monterey  between  the  Mexican  general  and 
ours  was  formally  put  an  end  to  by  our  government;  and 
orders  were  posted  for  the  advance  of  the  army  on  Saltillo, 
General  Worth  marching  first  as  before,  Taylor  following 
him  with  a  small  body  of  May's  dragoons  for  his  sole  escort, 
according  to  the  general's  reckless  habit.  "Damn  it,  old 
Zack's  foolhardy,  that's  what  he  is  —  plumb  foolhardy. 
'Tain't  safe!"  Burke  overheard  a  private  of  his  company 
exclaiming  indignantly  to  another.  On  this  Saltillo  march, 
our  leader  received  Santa  Anna's  answer  to  his  message  in 
forming  him  of  the  cessation  of  the  armistice;  it  was  so 
ferociously  worded  as  to  remove  any  hopes  General  Taylor 
may  have  entertained  of  a  speedy  settlement  of  the  difficul 
ties  between  the  two  republics.  All  ideas  of  peace  ought  to 
be  discarded,  said  the  Mexican  chief  savagely,  "...  while  a 
single  North  American  treads  in  arms  the  territory  of  this 
republic,  or  while  hostile  squadrons  remain  in  front  of  her 
ports!"  The  hostile  squadrons  were,  indeed,  remaining  in 
front  of  her  ports  to  some  purpose;  already  at  that  moment 
Commodore  Connor  had  taken  possession  of  Tampico  with 
out  a  shot  fired ;  we  got  the  news  a  fortnight  or  so  later,  and 
about  the  same  time  General  Wool  with  his  column  at  last 
turned  up  at  Monclova. 

In  the  meanwhile  and  amongst  all  these  martial  expeditions 
and  encounters,  Captain  Burke's  private  affairs  had  given 
him  some  little  concern.  There  reached  us  one  day,  just  be 
fore  we  marched,  a  soiled  and  battered  and  badly  damaged 
parcel  of  mail,  that  same  parcel  whose  loss  we  had  mourned 
a  couple  of  months  earlier  at  the  time  of  our  movement  from 
Matamoros;  and  how  it  had  been  lost  and  found,  and  what 
were  its  adventures  between  whiles,  nobody  ever  clearly  knew. 
It  came,  oddly  enough,  in  company  with  another  batch  of 
mail  which  was  the  latest  from  the  States;  and  Burke,  find 
ing  a  number  of  letters  in  both  instalments,  conscientiously 
read  the  oldest  first  in  the  order  of  their  writing,  with  a  smile 
at  his  own  whim.  They  were  from  his  partner,  young  Lewis; 
from  a  firm  of  lawyers  in  Cincinnati  of  whom  Nat  knew 
nothing,  not  even  the  names,  and  whose  communication  filled 


THE   AMERICAN   ARMY  MOVES   ON   TAMPICO      425 

him  with  an  astonishment  not  untinged  with  annoyance; 
and  from  Jim  Sharpless.  There  may  even  have  been  some 
others 1  whose  daintiness  of  tinted  paper  and  slender  Italian 
script  was  badly  marred  by  their  wanderings  and  rough  usage 
-  but  have  no  fear !  However  eagerly  the  captain  pounced 
on  and  devoured  these,  the  public  was  safe  from  them; 
Burke  would  not  have  confided  their  contents  to  any  living 
soul  at  the  time,  and  why  should  he  now,  after  forty  years? 
In  the  second  set  there  was  another  from  Messrs.  Wylie  & 
Slemm,  containing  substantially  the  same  information  —  or 
misinformation  —  with  additional  hints  and  offers,  which 
Nathan  put  aside  impatiently;  and  then  he  came  upon  and 
opened  with  real  pleasure  a  letter  from  John  Vardaman. 

" Bravo,  Nat!"  it  began;  they  had  just  got  the  news 

of  Monterey;  the  despatches  were  in  all  the  papers;  might 
one  of  the  unfeeling  and  unscrupulous  Democrats  who  had 
helped  to  plunge  the  country  into  this  barbarous  and  unjus 
tifiable  conflict,  congratulate  him?  The  doctor  thought 
that  Captain  Burke  was  doing  pretty  well  for  a  Whig,  a 
supporter  of  peace,  and  lover  of  concord.  "But  it  is  nothing 
more  than  what  we  all  thought,  and,  perhaps,  expected  of 
you,"  old  Jack  added  seriously,  after  a  good  deal  of  fun- 
poking  in  the  same  strain;  "and  I  hope  you  will  come  home  a 
general,  for  I  don't  believe  any  man  in  the  army  will  do  more 
to  deserve  promotion."  Burke  read  the  words  in  the  quiet 
of  his  little  tent,  reddening,  touched,  pleased;  he  wondered 
if  anybody  ever  had  such  friends,  so  kind,  enthusiastic,  and 
loyal.  The  letter  broke  off  here  abruptly,  and  was  resumed 
under  another  date  a  few  days  later.  "I  had  got  this  far," 
wrote  the  doctor,  "when  some  sudden  call  interfered;  so 
that  whatever  important  piece  of  news  I  was  about  to  com 
municate,  has  gone  clean  out  of  my  mind.  You  may  have 
heard  that  old  Mr.  Marsh  has  finally  retired  from  business. 
It  is  the  strangest  thing  to  see  him  on  the  street  at  all  sorts 
of  irregular  hours,  and  hanging  wistfully  around  the  doors  of 
offices  and  warehouses,  which,  I  suppose,  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  visiting  when  he  was  in  the  thick  of  affairs.  They  tell  me 
he  won't  even  go  in  and  sit  and  talk  now  that  he  has  no  par- 

1  None  of  the  letters  between  Captain  Burke  and  Miss  Sharpless 
could  be  found.  —  M.  S.  W. 


426  NATHAN   BURKE 

ticular  errand,  although  his  friends  —  or  rather  the  sons  and 
grandsons  of  his  friends,  as  scarcely  anybody  of  his  own  age 
is  left  —  often  invite  him.  'No,  no,  I  don't  care  about  it, 
Josh,  I  know  what  it  is  to  have  people  idling  around  in  your 
office  —  their  room's  a  deal  better  than  their  company. 
And  let  me  tell  you,  young  man,  you  mean  well,  I  know,  but 
it  ain't  very  good  business  to  ask  me.  Your  father  wouldn't 
have  done  it;  I  always  had  a  very  high  opinion  of  your 
father's  business  head.  There  ain't  any  such  men  as  he  was 
around  nowadays.'  I  overheard  him  saying  to  Joshua 
Barker  the  other  day  —  who  must  be  about  sixty,  by  the  way ! 
It's  rather  forlorn  to  see  the  old  man  —  makes  me  quite 
resolute  to  wear  out  rather  than  rust  out.  The  business 
appears  to  be  prospering  as  usual,  without  him.  My  sister 
tells  me  that  Mrs.  Ducey  has  recently  bloomed  out  with: 
item:  a  splendid  new  barouche  and  span  of  Blue-Grass 
blooded  trotters;  item:  the  whole  house  freshly  papered 
from  top  to  bottom;  item :  a  whole  new  set  of  full-length  lace 
curtains  —  'real  lace,  John!'  —  for  the  parlor;  and  item: 
the  Lord  knows  how  many  grand  new  toilettes  for  herself 
and  little  Miss  Blake,  made  out  of  bombazine,  shagreen, 
popeline  —  when  the  ladies  go  into  details  I  am  all  at  sea, 
but  the  most  elegant  and  expensive  materials,  anyhow.  By 
all  this  and  other  signs,  I  judge  that  Ducey  must  be  doing 
exceedingly  well,  perhaps  better  than  when  Mr.  Marsh  was 
in  the  office,  although  that  was  so  short  a  time  ago.  Indeed, 
he  has  intimated  to  several  people  that  the  old  man  was  very 
hide-bound  and  conservative  and  had  no  idea  of  keeping 
abreast  of  the  times;  whereas  Ducey  means  to  introduce 
progressive  modern  methods,  and  expand  the  business.  I 
know  very  little  about  business  myself  —  I  think  men  in  my 
profession  rarely  ever  do;  but  if  I  had  money  to  invest  I 
believe  I  should  trust  Mr.  Marsh's  judgment,  old  as  he  is, 
before  William  Ducey's. 

"Jim  and  his  father  have  at  last  made  up  their  differences; 
ever  since  that  experience  at  the  Harmony  Hall  meeting  I 
understand  the  Reverend  Mr.  Sharpless  has  shown  signs  of 
softening.  I  don't  know  how  they  have  compromised  — 
two  such  very  uncompromising  natures;  but  Jim  goes  to 
the  house  now.  He  is  rather  silent  and  uncommunicative 
for  him.  Just  now  he  is  quite  full  of  going  to  Mexico  — 


THE  AMERICAN   ARMY  MOVES   ON   TAMPICO     427 

joining  the  army  in  some  unofficial  capacity,  as  a  corre 
sponding  agent  for  some  eastern  newspaper,  he  tells  me  —  and 
will  probably  have  told  you  already.  Perhaps  it  was  this 
move  of  his  that  hastened  the  reconciliation.  ..." 

A  letter  from  Sharpless  in  this  same  mail  confirmed  the 
intelligence.  "Dear  Nat/'  he  wrote,  "Not  long  after  you 
read  this,  I  shall  be  on  the  bounding  briny,  sir,  —  according 
to  my  present  plans,  and  if  nothing  falls  through,  —  headed 
for  Mexico.  Having  withstood  the  guns  of  Monterey  — 
'with  distinguished  gallantry'  —  I  take  it  you  can  hold  up 
under  the  shock  of  this  sudden  information.  I  leave  here 
for  Baltimore  the  middle  of  December,  and  sail  from  there  on 
the  Napier  the  24th ;  if  we  have  any  sort  of  luck  that  ought 
to  land  us  in  Tampico  in  about  four  weeks  —  or  in  Vera 
Cruz,  whichever  port  we  are  headed  for,  I  am  in  a  pleasing 
uncertainty !  Nobody  up  here  knows  what  is  going  forward, 
nevertheless  every  one  is  perfectly  confident  that  the  gov 
ernment  contemplates  some  active  hostilities  all  along  the 
coast,  instead  of  this  supine  blockade;  so  that  perhaps  both 
Tampico  and  Vera  Cruz  will  have  fallen  by  the  time  I  get 
this  written,  and  we  can  take  our  choice  of  either.  By  'we' 
I  mean  a  fellow  named  Clarkson  of  the  Baltimore  Chronicle, 
and  myself,  and  it  is  likely  some  other  newspaper-men,  edi 
tors  or  underlings;  they  are  all  'stampeding'  (you  will 
observe  I  am  practising  up  on  the  Texas  vocabulary!)  for 
the  seat  of  war;  older  journalists  tell  me  there  never  was 
anything  like  it  seen  before  —  in  their  young  days  the  mili 
tary  authorities  wouldn't  have  put  up  with  a  horde  of  non- 
combatants  trapesing  around  with  the  army  or  after  it,  and 
writing  home  and  publishing  all  sorts  of  information  for  the 
enemy  to  read  and  profit  by,  etc.,  etc.  What  would  Welling 
ton  have  said,  what  would  Bonaparte  have  said,  what  would 
General  Jackson  have  said  to  it,  sir?  I  dare  say  the  truth  is 
the  old  boys  never  thought  of  this  method  of  supplying  news. 
Clarkson  is  to  be  paid  a  whacking  price  for  articles  'from 
the  front.'  I  get  my  expenses  and  a  more  modest  wage; 
but  the  experience  will  be  invaluable.  Mexico  is  so  big  a 
place,  and  military  movements  so  erratic,  that  I  can't  be  sure 
of  meeting  you  anywhere  —  still  I  am  hoping.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  grumbling  about  Taylor's  liberality  to  the  van 
quished,  and  the  rumor  is  that  he  is  to  be  recalled  or  deposed, 


428  NATHAN    BURKE 

and  Scott  sent  down.  I  am  too  far  away  and  know  too  little 
about  it  to  venture  an  opinion  on  the  terms  of  surrender; 
but,  arguing  from  what  we  know  of  old  Rough-and-Ready's 
character  and  previous  actions,  they  would  be  equitable  and 
humane. 

"It  is  strange  to  think,  Nat,  that  you  have  actually  been 
under  fire,  and  trained  that  deadly-sure  eye  on  your  brother- 
man,  and  stranger  still  to  picture  poor  George  Ducey  on  the 
stricken  field.  I  suppose  'missing'  is  equivalent  to  'gone 
for  good/  isn't  it?  Of  course  the  day  of  pillage  and  burning 
has  gone  by,  and  the  harpies  don't  rob  and  murder  the 
wounded  any  more;  but  what  might  not  happen  in  Mexico? 
In  honesty,  no  one  could  regret  him,  but  such  an  end  seems 
somehow  disproportionately  tragic.  I  went  up  to  the  house 
the  day  after  the  official  returns  were  published  —  I  hadn't 
the  courage  to  face  his  mother  sooner.  It  was  rather  ghastly 
to  see  the  place  very  richly  furbished  up  and  ornamented  — 
they  had  been  doing  everything  over  on  a  lavish  scale  lately, 
and  were  going  to  give  a  party  the  very  night  the  news  came. 
Francie  was  gathering  up  and  taking  away  the  poor  wilted 
bunches  of  flowers  that  had  been  used  in  decoration;  she 
came  with  a  grave  face  and  told  me  that  some  of  her  aunt's 
friends  were  there,  Mrs.  David  Gwynne  —  who  recently  lost 
her  only  child,  Len  Andrews's  wife,  you  know  —  and  others. 
The  house  was  quite  besieged  with  women  weeping  or  ready 
to  weep.  Everybody  takes  it  for  granted  that  this  is  the 
last  of  George.  Francie  was  pale,  but  entirely  self-contained; 
she  doesn't  make  any  pretence  of  being  sorry  for  George, 
although,  like  the  rest  of  us,  she  feels  very  deeply  for  Mrs. 
Ducey.  I  said  to  her  that  after  all  'missing'  wasn't  as  bad 
as  'killed'  or  'wounded,'  and  perhaps  in  the  next  news  he 
would  have  been  found. 

"  'Uncle  William  says  we  mustn't  hope  for  that,'  she  said 
quietly;  'he  says  that  if  the  war  were  between  two  civilized 
countries,  it  might  be  different,  but  with  savages  like  the 
Mexicans,  you  might  as  well  make  up  your  mind  to  the  worst. 
Of  course,  Aunt  Anne  does  hope  a  little,  though  —  she  will 
until  she  —  she  hears,  you  know.  That  makes  it  worse,  / 
think.  If  he  had  been  killed  or  wounded,  she'd  have  been 
certain,  anyhow.  I  —  I  want  to  hear  from  Nathan  —  from 
Captain  Burke,  I  mean  --'  she  interrupted  herself,  coloring 


THE   AMERICAN   ARMY   MOVES   ON   TAMPICO     429 

all  over  her  little  pale  face  —  'he'll  be  sure  to  find  George; 
if  he  can't,  nobody  can.  I  shall  feel  sure  when  we  hear 
from  him.' 

"  Something  impelled  me  to  say,  —  we  were  alone  in  the  big, 
forlorn  parlor,  and  nobody  could  be  scandalized  by  it, —  'If 
it  had  to  happen,  I  can't  help  being  glad  that  it  was  George 
and  not  Nat;  I  think  George  could  be  better  spared.' 

"  She  looked  straight  in  front  of  her,  with  an  extraordinary 
hardening  of  all  her  features,  and  said :  l  Mr.  Sharpless,  if  it 
wasn't  for  poor  Aunt  Anne,  it  wouldn't  make  a  bit  of  differ 
ence  to  anybody.  I  don't  know  why  it  should  be  any  worse 
to  say  it  about  a  dead  person  than  a  live  one  —  it  seems  worse, 
somehow  —  but  it's  so.  George  never  told  the  truth  in  his 
life,  and  he's  done  some  mean,  contemptible  things.  And  I 
don't  think  anything  could  ever  change  him.  When  he  was 
a  little,  little  boy  he  was  that  way.  I  remember  crying  my 
eyes  out  when  I  was  a  little  girl  thinking  that  I  had  to  love 
George,  because  he  was  my  cousin,  and  I  didn't  love  him,  and 
I  couldn't  make  myself.  After  I  grew  up,  of  course,  I  found 
out  that  you  don't  have  to  love  people  just  because  they 
happen  to  be  your  relations.  But  it  used  to  make  me 
unhappy  '  —  she  said  all  this  in  a  fiery  little  way  very  unlike 
her,  and  I  believe  was  going  on  with  more  of  it,  when  she 
seemed  suddenly  to  recollect  that  she  was  not  talking  to 
herself,  or  'having  it  out'  with  her  aunt  (as  her  manner 
somehow  suggested;  I  am  very  much  mistaken  if  this  was 
not  a  sort  of  sequel  to  some  recent  family  row  about  George), 
but  was  airing  a  private  matter  to  an  outsider;  she  stopped 
in  a  great  confusion,  red  as  a  poppy,  and  biting  her  lips 
and  looking  at  me  shamefacedly.  'I  —  I  beg  your  pardon, 
Mr.  Sharpless,  I  suppose  you  think  I'm  very  mean  and  silly 
to  talk  this  way  —  it  is  mean,  I  know  it  —  but  I  —  I  —  it's  so 
easy  for  me  to  talk  to  you  —  you  always  seem  to  under 
stand  - 

"'  Do  I,  Francie?'  I  said,  a  good  deal  moved,  and  hopeful, 
and  trembling  a  little,  I  suppose,  'you  —  you  like  to  —  you 
care  to  — 

lft  You're  just  the  same  as  a  big  brother,  you  know/  she 
interrupted  hastily.  But  I  wasn't  going  to  be  put  off  that 
way;  it  may  not  have  been  the  time  and  place  to  say  it,  but, 
Nat,  I  couldn't  hold  in  any  longer. 


430  NATHAN   BURKE 

1(1  Oh,  Francie,'  I  said;  'you  know  what  I  mean.  I  love 
you  —  I've  always  loved  you,  I  think.  I  ought  not  to 
speak  about  it  now,  perhaps,  but  I  must.  I  love  you.  I  want 
you  to  marry  me.' 

"  Does  all  this  bore  you  to  death,  old  fellow?  I  can't  help 
it,  I  feel  as  if  I  must  talk  to  somebody.  And  if  you  are  yawn 
ing  your  head  off,  why,  blow  out  the  candle,  cover  up  the 
campfire,  douse  the  glim,  in  short,  in  whatever  fashion  is 
popular  in  Mexico,  roll  up  in  your  blanket,  and  go  to  sleep. 
The  excitement  is  all  over,  I  have  done  with  my  eloquence, 
there  is  nothing  more  to  come,  no  white  satin  favors,  no  rice 
and  old  shoes,  no  orange-blossoms  and  clouds  of  tulle,  no 
necessity  for  Nat  Burke  to  go  down  into  his  jeans  for  a  silver 
cake-basket  —  none  whatever!  She  wouldn't  have  me,  and 
cried  bitterly,  and  was  sorry  for  me  from  the  bottom  of  her 
heart —  well-a-day!  I  asked  her  if  it  was  because  of  my 
free-thinking,  and  she  cried  out  vehemently,  No,  no,  she 
never  thought  about  that,  she  didn't  care  what  I  believed  or 
didn't  believe,  and  Aunt  Anne  herself  said  she  was  right,  and 
not  to  mind  what  people  said  about  me.  I  said,  'Francie,  is 
there  somebody  else?7  which  was  not  a  fair  question;  and  I 
felt  properly  punished  when  she  sobbed  harder  than  ever 
and  wouldn't  answer.  I  suppose  there  is;  do  you  remember 
that  I  once  thought  it  was  you,  and  was  quite  sure  of  it  when 
you  began  to  tell  me  of  your  engagement?  I  had  made 
up  my  mind  never  to  ask  her,  because  of  you. 

"  So  I  came  away  to  my  lodgings,  and  they  looked  bare  and 
empty  and  lonely  like  my  life;  Clarkson's  letter  had  come  and 
was  lying  on  the  table,  which  was  all  littered  up  with  pipes 
and  manuscript  and  dirty  bundles  of  proofs.  I  used  to  cherish 
a  dream  of  how  she  would  come  into  my  study,  and  make  a 
delightful  little  fuss  over  the  disorder  and  the  smell  of  to 
bacco,  and  fall  to  and  get  me  all  straightened  up  in  a  tre 
mendous  flutter  of  skirts  and  ribbons  —  pooh !  You'd  be 
surprised  how  hard  it  was  for  me  to  give  up  that  foolish 
fancy;  I  sat  down  and  morosely  accepted  Clarkson's  offer 
and  invitation  on  the  spot.  I  think  I  never  was  so  weary 
of  anything  in  my  life  as  the  view  from  this  window,  these 
lifeless  streets,  the  faces  of  my  fellow-boarders  than  whom 
God  never  made  a  duller  lot,  the  sight  of  the  wretched  little 


THE   AMERICAN   ARMY  MOVES   ON   TAMPICO     431 

out-at-elbows  youngster  with  ink-smudges  on  his  face  and 
warts  on  his  hands  who  comes  from  the  Journal  office  for 
my  copy,  and  falls  asleep  sitting  on  the  top  step  of  the  stairs 
outside  my  door  —  oh,  I  am  sick  of  it  all. 

'  I  care  for  nobody,  no  not  1 1 
And  nobody  cares  for  me  ! ' 

That  last  is  not  strictly  true.  I  thought  it  a  duty  to  write 
my  father  and  mother  and  tell  them  what  I  meant  to  do  — 
yellow  fever  or  a  stray  bullet  might  come  along  and  finish  me 
down  there,  you  know,  although,  of  course,  I  didn't  dwell  on 
those  dismal  subjects  to  them.  I  merely  wanted  them  to 
know  where  I  was  and  what  I  was  about.  Father  imme 
diately  sent  me  word  to  come  to  the  house!  It  was  the  first 
time  in  ten  years.  I  went  and  we  shook  hands,  and  neither 
one  of  us  said  a  word  about  our  ancient  quarrel;  it  is  so  good 
to  be  friends  we  are  afraid  of  shaking  up  those  grisly  old 
bones.  I  suppose  there  couldn't  be  a  stranger  reconcilia 
tion,  when  neither  has  receded  an  inch.  We  have  only  learned 
a  little  charity  and  forbearance  with  our  advancing  years; 
he  doesn't  want  to  cane  me  into  Christianity  any  more,  and 
I  have  the  courtesy  and  common  sense  to  behave  with  an 
outward  show  of  respect  anyhow.  When  I  was  a  melancholy 
hobbledehoy  of  sixteen,  I  thought  I  must  be  forever  contra 
dicting  and  disputing,  and  posing  him  with  unkindly  humor 
ous  questions.  I  go  there  almost  every  day;  it  makes  my 
mother  quite  pathetically  happy;  and  I  think  Mary  is 
pleased,  too.  You  know  she  is  very  cool  always  and  self- 
possessed,  so  of  course  I  don't  look  for  any  display  of  emotion 
from  her. 

"  The  last  I  heard  from  you  a  mail-bag  had  been  lost;  let 
us  trust  that  none  of  my  valuable  communications  were  in 
it.  In  a  little  while,  I  dare  say  we  shall  be  sending  and  receiv 
ing  messages  from  Mexico  with  the  speed  of  light;  they  are 
trying  the  Electric  Telegraph,  and  they  say  it's  perfectly 
practicable  even  for  long  distances  and  over  mountain  ranges, 
although  that  seems  hardly  possible.  They  talked  the  other 
day  from  Washington  to  New  York;  the  message  was  re 
peated  at  Philadelphia,  I  believe  —  but  even  so,  the  thing 
is  almost  incredible.  They  have  a  system  of  spelling  by  dots 


432  NATHAN   BURKE 

and  dashes  on  the  machine;  but  no  doubt  after  a  while  that 
will  be  improved  on,  as  it  wouldn't  be  very  available  to  the 
general  public,  hampered  by  a  different  alphabet. 

###-!  !  !-!  !—??_!_### 

"The  above  is  a  furious,  profane  gibe  at  Fate,  couched  in 
the  Dot-and-Dash  dialect!  Perhaps  its  just  as  well  the  'gen 
eral  public'  can't  read  it. 

"  Your  friend,  the 

"  CONFIRMED  OLD  BACHELOR, 

"J.  S." 

Burke  laid  the  letter  down.  Poor  Jim !  thought  the  young 
man,  regretfully  sympathetic;  and  how  unequally  are  the 
prizes  of  this  life  distributed!  He  himself,  as  unworthy  as 
he  was,  had  the  desire  of  his  heart,  the  love  of  the  brightest 
and  sweetest  and  most  beautiful  of  women,  a  source  of  daily 
wonder  and  pride  and  happiness  to  him  —  while  Jim,  as 
good  a  man  in  every  way,  must  be  disappointed.  It  was 
strange  that  Francie  did  not  appreciate  what  was  being  of 
fered  her  —  but  no  one  can  ever  tell  what  a  girl  will  like  or 
dislike.  He  hoped,  with  a  serious  face,  that  she  wasn't 
going  to  fall  in  love  with,  and  throw  herself  away  on,  some 
worthless  fellow;  he  frowningly  ran  over  all  the  young  men 
of  her  circle  or  whom  she  would  be  likely  to  know,  not  one  of 
whom  was  half  good  enough  for  her,  to  his  notion;  and  the 
thought  stayed  with  him  all  day,  with  an  unusual  sense  of 
worry  and  resentment. 

It  did  not  occupy  his  mind  so  much,  however,  as  to  inter 
fere  with  his  writing  briefly  to  Messrs.  Wylie  &  Slemm,  to 
decline  their  proposal.  "In  the  course  of  my  legal  experi 
ence,"  he  wrote,  "I  have  repeatedly  (as  was  natural)  en 
countered  the  names  and  records  you  mention;  so  that  a 
number  of  the  facts  you  have  discovered  were  already  famil 
iar  to  me,  and  my  inferences  corresponded  with  yours.  While 
I  have  no  doubt  that  some  sort  of  claim  might  be  estab 
lished,  I  have  never  cared  to  take  any  steps  in  that  direction; 
and  do  not  care  to  now.  Although  constrained  to  decline 
your  services,  I  beg  to  assure  you  of  my  highest  apprecia 
tion — "  wrote  Nat,  with  a  dreadful  sardonic  grin  —  "and 


THE   AMERICAN   ARMY  MOVES   ON   TAMPICO     433 

remain,  etc.,  etc."     "The  shysters!"  he  ejaculated  contemp 
tuously,  as  he  folded  up  this  neat  rejoinder. 

It  was  some  little  while  before  the  young  gentleman  re 
ceived  any  more  letters,  or  found  time  to  write  any.  Our 
army  took  the  road  for  Victoria,  where  we  arrived  about 
Christmas  Day  of  1846,  as  nearly  as  I  remember,  in  an  over 
powering  heat,  dust,  and  sunshine,  after  between  two  and 
three  weeks  of  a  trying  march.  General  Quitman,  who 
commanded  on  this  march,  took  possession  of  the  place  with  a 
good  deal  of  military  ceremony,  and  no  resistance  whatever, 
although  we  lived  in  the  midst  of  alarms,  and  were  constantly 
being  turned  out  at  all  hours  of  the  night  and  day  to  patrol 
the  town,  and  prepare  for  a  sudden  descent  of  the  enemy, 
who,  under  Santa  Anna,  were  reported  to  be  advancing  in 
great  force  from  the  direction  of  San  Luis  Potosi;  indeed, 
we  had  been  somewhat  harassed  on  the  way  by  Minon's 
cavalry,  hanging  on  our  flanks  and  rear.  The  troops  re 
mained  at  Victoria,  resting,  for  about  a  fortnight,  during 
which  time  Twiggs's  division  with  the  general-in-chief  came 
in,  and  also  Patterson  with  his  volunteers  from  the  Rio 
Grande,  the  men  very  much  exhausted,  having  suffered 
greatly  from  the  want  of  water  on  the  road.  All  this  coun 
try  to  the  north,  however,  seemed  to  be  swept  clean  of 
Mexican  soldiery;  except  for  a  brush  with  the  guerillas  now 
and  then,  nobody  had  encountered  anything  resembling 
armed  opposition.  We  held  what  we  had  got;  and  might 
have  been  inclined  to  a  little  cockiness  about  our  achieve 
ments,  had  it  not  been  for  adverse  comment  from  home,  and 
the  disagreements  between  General  Taylor  and  the  Ad 
ministration.  These  had  been  pretty  thoroughly  aired  by 
this  time;  everybody  had  had  his  say,  public  and  private, 
official  and  unofficial;  General  Taylor's  letter  to  General 
Gaines  explaining  the  whole  circumstances  of  the  Monterey 
campaign  was  published  first  in  the  New  York  Express, 
whence  it  travelled  all  over  the  country;  the  government 
retaliated  by  sending  out  that  famous  order  calling  atten 
tion  to  Paragraph  650  of  the  Army  Regulations:  "Private 
letters  .  .  .  relative  to  military  operations  are  frequently 
mischievous  in  design,  and  always  disgraceful  to  the  army. 
They  are  therefore,  strictly  forbidden.  .  .  ."  And  if  you  wrote 
any  such  letter  for  publication,  or  placed  it  beyond  your 


434  NATHAN    BURKE 

control,  so  that  it  found  its  way  to  the  press,  you  were  to  be 
dismissed  from  the  service! 

This  order,  you  may  be  sure,  found  its  way  to  the  press 
fast  enough;  the  political  kettle  boiled  over;  strange  to  say, 
there  was  more  letter-writing  than  ever.  Colonel  Jefferson 
Davis  explained;  Major-general  Henderson  explained;  Brig 
adier-general  Worth  explained.  These  gentlemen  had  all 
been  on  the  Peace  Commission  at  Monterey,  and  felt  it  due 
themselves  to  defend  the  articles  of  capitulation.  And  in 
the  meanwhile  the  army  at  Victoria  heard  that  it  was  true 
the  War  Department  had  sent  Scott  down;  already  he  had 
landed  at  the  Brazos;  was  Taylor  to  be  superseded,  sure 
enough,  we  wondered.  And  what  was  all  this  concentration 
of  forces  at  Tampico  about?  The  place  had  fallen;  we  un 
derstood  we  were  to  be  sent  there,  and  also  Worth's  corps  now 
at  Saltillo;  but  for  what  movement,  or  under  what  general, 
no  one  knew,  and  there  were  a  hundred  conjectures.  If 
personal  popularity  and  the  confidence  of  the  entire  army 
could  have  decided  it,  there  would  have  been  no  question  of 
the  man  to  lead  us.  General  Taylor  could  not  stir  a  foot 
abroad  without  being  surrounded,  followed,  hurrahed  for 
until  you  would  have  thought  the  men  would  burst  their 
throats.  He  visited  the  camp  of  the  Illinois  Volunteers, 
and  the  honest  fellows  fairly  mobbed  him  in  their  eagerness 
to  see,  speak  to,  shake  hands  with,  old  Rough-and-Ready. 
His  orderly  rode  a  prancing  cavalry  horse,  and  cut  so  mag 
nificently  military  a  figure  that  he  was  mistaken  at  first  by 
many  for  the  general  himself,  who  fared  forth  on  a  big,  mild- 
mannered  mule  and  wore  his  ancient  black  frock  coat,  and  a 
Texan  hat.  Nobody  enjoyed  the  joke  more  than  Taylor, 
and  when  the  troops  finally  discovered  him,  their  enthusiasm 
was  even  greater  than  before.  Did  ever  any  general  shake 
hands  with  a  regiment  of  raw  recruits  before,  and  do  it 
without  the  slightest  loss  of  dignity  and  authority?  In  his 
plain  ways,  his  courage  and  common  sense,  his  enterprise 
and  resolution,  perhaps  we  all  obscurely  recognized  whatever 
is  best  and  most  typical  of  the  American  character,  and  of 
that  vanishing  race  of  pioneers  to  which  we  all  belonged, 
and  felt  a  pride  in  him  accordingly;  and  even  if  his  military 
abilities  had  been  less  —  it  is  no  part  of  this  writer's  plan  to 
discuss  them  —  I  believe  we  should  all  have  liked,  trusted 
in,  and  followed  him. 


THE   AMERICAN   ARMY  MOVES   ON   TAMPICO     435 

Except  on  that  one  occasion  during  the  attack  on  Monterey 
it  was  never  Burke's  good  fortune  to  meet  General  Taylor. 
Before  we  left  Victoria  the  captain  had  been  appointed  by 
General  Quitman  —  with  whom  he  had  become  very  good 
friends  —  on  his  staff  and  to  fill  the  post  of  military  secre 
tary  left  vacant  by  Mr.  John  S.  Holt,  who  was  about  to  return 
to  the  States ;  and  in  this  capacity  Captain  Burke  served  out 
the  war,  being,  I  think,  the  only  volunteer  officer  member  of 
any  one  of  the  leading  general's  official  family,  as  it  was  the 
custom  to  select  their  aides,  etc.,  from  the  subalterns  of  the 
line  regiments.  By  this  move  the  captain  missed  forever 
the  chance,  not  alone  of  knowing  Taylor,  but  of  taking  part 
in  the  glorious  engagement  of  Buena  Vista,  and  winning 
immortal  laurels  thereby.  He  can  freely  boast  that  he 
might  have  won  them  —  who  is  to  deny  him?  Certainly 
not  those  who  will  have  to  gallop  off  to  their  libraries  and 
search  the  Encyclopaedia  to  find  out  where  and  when  Buena 
Vista  was  fought,  and  what  good  came  of  it  at  last!  At  the 
time  of  our  departure  from  Victoria,  he  was  rather  congratu 
lating  himself  on  his  sagacity  or  good  luck,  for  it  looked  as  if 
there  might  be  very  little  activity  in  this  part  of  Mexico,  as 
we  now  knew  and  the  enemy  knew  that  our  movement  was 
directed  on  Vera  Cruz,  and  the  interior;  and  to  sit  down  in 
quiet  at  some  small  outpost  on  the  Rio  Grande  did  not  at  all 
suit  with  Mr.  Burke's  views  of  a  martial  career.  On  the 
15th  of  January,  when  our  advance  had  already  been  two  days 
on  the  Tampico  road,  it  was  published  in  Orders  that  the 
War  Department  directed  the  return  of  General  Taylor  to 
Monterey  with  a  certain  few  of  the  troops,  with  which  he 
was  expected  to  hold  and  defend  that  vast  territory,  posses 
sion  of  which  had  been  acquired  mainly  by  his  efforts ;  and 
that  we  were  now  under  the  command  of  Major-general 
Winfield  Scott,  practically  the  whole  of  the  army  having 
been  thus  annexed  by  the  latter. 

It  is  not  my  place  to  pass  upon  the  justice  or  injustice  of 
this  governmental  decree;  and  I  think  posterity  has  already 
pronounced  its  verdict  on  the  relative  merits  of  President 
Polk  and  his  cabinet,  and  Zachary  Taylor.  "It  is  with 
deep  sensibility,"  he  wrote,  "that  the  commanding  general 
finds  himself  separated  from  the  troops  he  has  so  long  com 
manded.  To  those  corps,  regular  and  volunteer,  who  have 


436  NATHAN   BURKE 

shared  with  him  the  active  services  of  the  field,  he  feels  the 
attachment  due  such  associations;  while  to  those  making 
their  first  campaign,  he  must  express  his  regret  that  he  cannot 
participate  with  them  in  its  eventful  scenes  -  '  and  with 
these  and  other  equally  brave  and  kind  and  manly  words  the 
old  soldier  bade  us  farewell. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

TAMPICO 

BRIGADIER-GENERAL  John  Anthony  Quitman,  under  whom 
Burke  now  came  to  serve,  and  for  whom  he  had  a  great 
liking  and  respect,  was  at  this  time  between  forty-five  and 
fifty  years  of  age,  of  a  fine  erect  and  martial  figure,  and  with 
one  of  the  handsomest  and  most  amiable  faces  ever  seen. 
He  was  a  native  of  New  York  State  by  birth,  but  having 
gone  to  Mississippi  while  yet  a  very  young  man,  married, 
made  a  fortune,  and  attained  considerable  personal  and 
political  eminence  there,  was  by  now  more  of  a  Mississippian 
than  the  Mississippians  themselves,  as  sometimes  happens 
with  these  transplanted  loyalties.  But,  indeed,  the  general 
was  a  man  to  whom  any  sort  of  moderate  emotions,  middling 
standards,  halfway  measures,  were  impossible.  His  enthu 
siastic  devotion  to  the  State  and  her  institutions  was  only 
equalled  by  his  enthusiastic  devotion  to  the  country  at  large, 
to  the  legal  profession  —  he  had  been  Chancellor  of  the 
State,  and  had  an  extensive  practice  —  to  the  profession  of 
arms  which  he  was  now  following,  to  his  wife,  his  family, 
his  friends !  Whatever  General  Quitman  had  to  do,  that  he 
did  with  all  his  might  and  main,  displaying  an  incredible 
boyish  ardor,  self-confidence,  and  eagerness.  A  braver  man 
or  a  simpler  and  more  generous  spirit  never  existed;  yet  he 
flourished  about  his  military  duties  like  a  hero  of  melodrama; 
he  got  his  men  up  in  line  and  addressed  them  with  tremen 
dous  patriotic  and  stirring  harangues;  he  wrote  glorious 
long  oratorical  letters  when  two  words  of  ordinary  talk  would 
have  served  the  purpose.  I  remember  his  once  describing 
with  profound  admiration  and  in  as  vivid  language  as  if  he 
had  been  on  the  spot  that  celebrated  incident  of  the  battle 
of  Fontenoy,  where  the  young  noblemen  of  I  do  not  know 
what  splendid  body  of  French  troops  saluted  their  oppo 
nents  of  the  English  line — "Messieurs  de  la  Garde,  tirez  le 
premier!"  and  announcing  fervently  that  he  thought  that 

437 


438  NATHAN    BURKE 

one  of  the  finest  chivalric  scenes  of  history!  To  the  rather 
utilitarian  mind  of  his  auditor  it  seemed  a  needless  piece  of 
rococo;  but  Burke  and  his  general  agreed  to  differ  with  abso 
lute  friendliness;  there  is  something,  at  first  sight,  almost 
strange  in  the  association  of  two  such  widely  divergent  char 
acters,  that  inclines  one  to  put  some  faith  in  that  law  of 
the  attraction  of  opposites  about  which  we  hear  people  talk. 
Quitman,  as  was  natural  to  him  when  his  affections  were 
anyways  engaged,  greatly  overestimated  Captain  Burke's 
parts  and  achievements;  something  in  the  younger  man's 
sober  and  occasionally  satiric  view  of  men  and  the  world 
pleased  him  by  its  very  contrast  to  his  own;  he  used  to  de 
clare  that  for  hard  work  and  hard  knocks  their  two  careers 
were  an  exact  parallel  —  whereas,  except  that  both  had 
been  lawyers,  nothing  could  have  been  more  unlike!  And 
while  extolling  openly  and  with  a  floweriness  of  words  that 
made  the  captain  to  blush  and  squirm  upon  his  seat,  what 
he  called  the  "  laconic  brevity  "  of  Burke's  speech,  he  would 
pronounce  him  to  be  possessed  of  unusual  conversational 
powers  when  he  chose  to  exert  them  —  the  truth  being  that 
honest  Nat,  if  no  such  brilliant  talker,  was  an  exceptionally 
good  listener,  which  has  more  to  do  with  being  an  acceptable 
companion  than  most  people  suppose.  He  came  to  be  the 
repository  of  all  the  general's  past  history,  private  affairs, 
his  expectations,  convictions,  aspirations,  his  mercurial 
woes  and  joys.  He  would  weep  when  he  talked  to  Burke 
about  the  children  he  had  lost,  little  Edward,  little  John  — 
they  had  both  died  in  a  dreadful  tragic  manner  after  only  a 
few  hours'  illness  during  the  cholera  epidemic  at  Natchez  in 
'33;  he  kept  a  lock  of  his  father's  hair,  the  old  gentleman, 
who  was  a  minister  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church,  having 
died  at  the  fairly  ripe  age  of  seventy-five  some  fifteen  years 
before,  in  the  odor  of  sanctity,  and  having  been,  I  do  not 
doubt,  a  man  of  intelligence  and  strong  character  —  but 
few  sons,  Burke  thought,  are  sentimental  enough  to  keep 
a  parent's  memory  green  after  this  true-lovers'  fashion.  It 
touched  the  young  fellow  even  while  it  obscurely  amused 
him;  he  liked  his  general  all  the  better  for  that  picturesque 
attitudinizing,  that  freedom  and  fluency  of  talk,  those  eager 
confidences  which  Burke  himself  would  have  been  the  last 
man  in  the  world  to  fall  into;  for  somehow,  not  all  of  Quit- 


TAMPICO  439 

man's  plainly  perceptible  weaknesses  and  want  of  balance 
could  make  him  less  of  a  striking  and  interesting  personality, 
a  man  to  command  respect. 

On  the  Tampico  march  General  Quitman's  brigade  — 
which  now  formed  part  of  Patterson's  division  —  was  made 
up  of  the  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Alabama  regiments; 
so  that  Captain  Burke  had  plenty  of  opportunities  of  becom 
ing  acquainted  with  the  ' '  chivalrj^ "  —  it  was  their  own  expres 
sion  —  of  those  Southern  States,  as  represented  by  their 
officers;  and  he  found  them  most  high-spirited  and  gallant 
young  men.  Some  of  them  marched  in  tolerable  state  for 
militiamen,  with  horses,  negro  body-servants,  and  various 
small  comforts  unknown  to  the  Ohio  captain  —  which, 
by  the  way,  they  shared  with  whomsoever  lacked,  with  the 
utmost  kindness,  tact,  and  unselfishness.  The  hardships 
of  campaigning  were  beginning  to  tell  on  our  men;  by  the 
last  of  January,  when  we  reached  the  sea,  they  were  ragged 
and  nearly  barefoot;  they  had  not  been  paid  in  six  months; 
rations  were  insufficient,  there  was  a  great  deal  of  sickness, 
small  parties  of  Mexican  lancers  or  light  troops  constantly 
annoyed  us.  Desertions  were  dishearteningly  numerous, 
yes,  even  from  the  ranks  of  those  sons  of  chivalry  with  whom 
Captain  Burke  was  now  associated.  If  there  had  been  any 
thing  materially  better  to  be  got  by  joining  the  enemy,  one 
could  hardly  have  blamed  the  poor  wretches;  but  the  Mexi 
cans  were  worse  armed  and  fed  than  ourselves  apparently; 
their  sole  advantage  was  that  they  were  in  the  country  of 
their  birth.  We  heard  that  one  desperado,  by  name  Thomas 
Riley,  who  had  deserted  from  the  3d  or  4th  Infantry  before 
the  war  opened,  —  I  believe,  —  had  gathered  to  himself  up 
wards  of  a  hundred  of  his  fellow-deserters,  and  formed  them 
into  what  was  called  (slangily)  the  "Brigade  of  Saint  Pat 
rick,"  from  which  many  got  the  notion  that  these  turn 
coats  were  all  Irishmen  —  an  unjust  and  cruel  error,  for  we 
had  all  remarked  that  our  Irish,  or,  at  least,  those  who  bore 
Irish  names,  our  O'Briens,  Murphys,  and  Flanagans,  were 
not  only  the  stoutest  of  fighters,  but  inflexibly  loyal.  One 
of  them  even  trapped  very  cunningly  a  Mexican  secret  agent 
who  was  trying  to  lure  away  some  of  the  men  —  and  had 
succeeded  more  than  once,  alasf —  with  promises  of  money, 
and  an  officer's  rank  in  their  army. 


440  NATHAN   BURKE 

Notwithstanding  all  this  discontent,  nothing  could  have 
exceeded  General  Quitman's  thought  and  care  for  his  troops 
on  the  march  —  wherein  he  differed  notably  from  most  of 
the  other  commanders  whom  Burke  had  the  honor  to  know. 
A  volunteer  officer's  relations  with  his  men  are,  in  nature, 
more  intimate  and  personal  than  those  between  the  regular 
army  private  and  his  superior;  but  Burke's  general  outdid 
every  other  in  the  field,  volunteer  or  regular,  in  zeal  for  the 
welfare  of  his  command.  It  was  said  that  he  never  laid  down 
upon  his  bed  at  night  without  having  assured  himself  that 
every  man  in  the  brigade  was  in  his  proper  place,  whether  on 
duty  or  at  rest;  and  when,  on  our  arrival  within  ten  miles  of 
Tampico,  we  were  assigned  a  camping-ground  —  with  that 
strange  indifference  or  contempt  of  caution  which  distin 
guishes  the  American  soldier  —  of  a  narrow,  low-lying  strip 
of  semi-bog  between  a  lagoon  and  a  piece  of  jungle,  steaming 
with  hot  moisture  and  foul  odors,  and  already  multitudi- 
nously  tenanted  by  every  plague-bred  and  poisonous  insect  or 
reptile  that  grows  —  when  we  were  ordered  to  encamp  here, 
I  say,  the  general  himself  mounted  a  horse,  rode  to  head 
quarters,  and  presented  our  case  so  forcibly  that  we  were 
moved  in  a  couple  of  days  to  a  much  higher  and  more  healthy 
spot  among  the  hills  back  of  the  city,  and  adjoining  General 
Twiggs's  camp  on  the  left.  The  latter  had  reached  Tampico 
somewhat  in  advance  of  us;  they  reported  that  General 
Scott,  though  looked  for  daily,  had  not  yet  arrived;  the 
town  was  a  wretched  little  hole,  not  in  the  least  like  New 
Orleans  as  we  had  been  led  to  expect  —  never  saw  so  many 
homely  women',  and  beggars,  and  dirt,  and  lice  in  your  life; 
it  rained  this  way,  cats-and-dogs,  all  the  time  —  you7 II  see; 
the  camp  was  full  of  Mexicans  peddling  pulque,  or  that  other 
stuff  —  what  d'ye  call  it?  — muscal  —  and  the  other  night 
the  whole  division  got  good  and  drunk  and  raised  h — 1  for 
hours;  it's  my  opinion  Scott  had  better  hurry  up  and  get  the 
army  out  of  this,  or  there'll  be  precious  little  army  to  get  - 
and,  I  say,  Burke,  there's  a  fellow  in  the  town  looking  for  you; 
some  newspaper  fellow,  the  place  is  running  over  with  'em, 
you  know;  tall,  thin,  black-haired  man,  I  can't  remember  his 
name,  but  he  says  you're  to  look  for  him  at  the  "  Commercial 
Exchange." 

And  so  on,  and  so  on;   everybody  was  out  of  money,  out 


TAMPICO  441 

of  clothes,  out  of  temper.  But  Captain  Burke,  pricking  up 
his  ears  at  this  last  intelligence,  borrowed  a  horse  from  the 
adjutant  and  rode  into  the  city,  where  he  found  the  "Com 
mercial"  without  trouble.  Every  town  in  Mexico  seemed 
to  have  a  coffee-house,  hotel,  or  other  place  of  public  enter 
tainment  "del  Comercio";  it  was  like  the  San  Juan  rivers, 
of  which  if  there  was  one,  I  am  sure  there  were  fifty.  This 
"Comercio"  fronted  the  main  plaza;  in  spite  of  a  steady 
downpour  of  rain,  the  streets  were  crowded;  one  could 
hardly  push  through  the  archway  into  the  commercial  patio ; 
and  across  the  court  under  the  arcade  running  around  all 
four  sides,  the  first  person  Burke  saw  was  Sharpless,  tanned 
with  the  sea-voyage,  long  and  thin  in  drab  linen  ducks,  with 
a  cup  of  the  thick  sugary  Mexican  chocolate  before  him,  two 
other  alert-looking  gentlemen  keeping  him  company  at  the 
little  round  iron-legged  table  —  one  of  them  occupied  with  a 
note-book  and  pencil.  Jim  looked  up,  seeing  Burke  —  he 
was  very  quick  of  eye  —  almost  before  the  other  saw  him  — 
"What,  Nat!"  "Hello,  Jim!"  Lord  bless  me,  it's  forty 
years,  and  I  feel  now  the  delight  with  which  I  shook  his 
hand!  The  others  beheld  this  welcome  sympathetically; 
if  it  is  a  pleasure  in  a  far  country  to  meet  a  mere  townsman, 
think  what  it  is  to  meet  a  friend.  One  of  them,  when  Sharp- 
less  presently  introduced  us,  was  a  Mr.  Kendall  of  the  New 
Orleans  Picayune,  the  other,  Clarkson,  whose  name  Burke  had 
already  heard. 

James,  far  from  being  the  disappointed,  despondent  lover 
who  might  have  been  expected,  was  in  admirable  health  and 
spirits,  and  gave  Burke  a  very  lively  account  of  the  voyage 
from  Baltimore  in  one  of  the  army  transports  on  which 
Clarkson  had  secured  berths  by  some  wire-pulling;  and 
imitated  the  men  being  seasick  crossing  the  Gulf  with  amaz 
ing  fidelity  and  brilliancy  —  officers  and  privates  quite  dis 
tinct  so  that  one  could  tell  them  apart  at  once !  He  had  left 
everybody  at  home  well,  he  said  except  — 

"Not  Mary?" 

Oh,  no,  Mary  was  all  right  —  "but,  Nathan,"  he  said 
with  a  grave  face,  "Mrs.  Ducey  looks  awfully  —  awfully. 
I  suppose  there  can't  be  any  doubt  about  George,  hey? 
Honestly,  I've  seldom  regretted  as  much  the  loss  of  a  valued 
citizen  as  I  have  his  —  not  on  his  account,  but  for  his  poor 


442  NATHAN    BURKE 

mother.  She's  all  swathed  up  in  crape  —  it  looks  rather 
pretty  and  striking  with  her  fair  hair  —  which  may  be  some 
solace  to  a  woman/'  said  Jim,  a  little  cynically.  "But,  it's 
the  strangest  thing  about  Francie  —  "  he  brought  the  name 
out  with  a  slight  effort,  reddening  through  his  sunburn,  and 
carefully  keeping  his  eyes  in  another  direction  —  "she  — 
why,  she  seems  to  have  made  up  her  mind  not  to  even  pre 
tend  for  her  aunt's  sake  to  grieve  for  George.  She  doesn't 
go  around  in  black  —  not  a  bit  of  it !  She  wears  all  those 
ribbons  and  bright  clothes  they  got  before  they  heard  the 
news,  never  misses  a  party,  and  if  anybody  asks  her  about 
it,  says  right  out  that  it's  a  pity  for  his  father  and  mother, 
but  she's  not  going  to  be  a  hypocrite  and  make  people  think 
she  cares  except  for  them !  I  think  —  I  suspect,  that  is — 
there's  been  some  kind  of  family  schism  about  George  — 
something  he's  done  or  said,  or,  —  or  written  home,  you 
know,  Nat,"  said  Jim,  looking  at  his  friend  with  an  odd  ex 
pression,  "that's  displeased  Francie."  Nat  was  silent  a  mo 
ment,  thinking  in  a  flash  of  resentment  of  what  George 
might  have  written  —  then  with  an  unaccustomed  and  com 
forting  warmth  at  his  heart,  "Francie  was  always  a  loyal 
little  friend,"  he  said;  nor  did  it  occur  to  him  until  after 
wards  how  irrelevant  was  this  remark.  Jim  began  to  talk 
about  something  else. 

"People  say  Ducey  has  made  a  great  deal  of  money  the 
last  few  months.  They're  certainly  spending  a  great  deal. 
It's  funny,  I  never  thought  he  was  a  particularly  bright  man, 
but  I  suppose  he's  just  one  of  those  fellows  with  a  turn  for 
business  and  nothing  much  else.  I've  known  other  success 
ful  men  that  were  uninteresting  to  meet  socially  the  same 
way.  Old  Mr.  Marsh  must  have  been  a  great  clog  on  him 
here  these  last  years  —  Ducey  hints  that  himself." 

"Mr.  Marsh  was  the  backbone  of  the  business  when  I 
was  there  —  of  course,  he's  too  old  now,"  said  Nathan, 
wondering  a  little  dubiously  at  this  complete  reversal  of 
popular  opinion  and  his  own  past  judgments.  "What's  Mr. 
Ducey  been  doing  to  make  such  a  lot  all  at  once  ?  Does  any 
body  know?  Army  contracts?  " 

Sharpless  thought  not,  believed  it  was  some  very  lucky 
speculations,  he  didn't  know  exactly  what;  he  was  rather 
vague.  "Business  doesn't  mean  much  to  me  except  pay- 


TAMPICO  443 

ing  your  debts,  and  getting  in  what's  owing  you,  Nat,  you 
know  that,"  he  said  with  a  laugh.  "  Earn  a  little  something, 
and  don't  spend  it  all  —  that's  my  whole  creed.  I'll  never  be 
a  rich  man."  Which  was  true,  as  the  years  have  proved.  He 
never  quite  got  over  the  habits  of  his  early  vagabondage, 
saved  and  invested  only  at  the  insistence  of  his  friends,  and 
was  forever  lending  or  giving  away  all  he  had. 

"You  got  my  letter  with  the  interview  with  'Liph?"  he 
asked  presently;  "naturally  I  haven't  mentioned  the  matter 
to  anybody,  but,  Nat,  the  fact  is,  I'm  on  edge  with  curiosity. 
Are  you  the  heir  to  the  earldom?  Has  the  iron  chest  sunk 
in  the  ground  forty  feet  due  north  from  the  blasted  oak  been 
found?  And  does  it  contain  the  missing  will,  and  the  other 
papers  proving  conclusively  that  you  are  your  father's  legal 
wife's  son,  and  not  the  child  of  the  other  lady,  who  —  ahem! 
—  was  no  better  than  she  ought  to  be?" 

"Oh,  drop  it!"  said  Burke,  grinning,  yet  subtly  annoyed  — 
as  references  to  this  subject  generally  did  annoy  him.  "I 
wrote  to  those  lawyers,  and  invited  'em  in  polite  language  to 
mind  their  own  affairs  and  leave  mine  alone.  They  wanted 
me  to  put  in  a  claim  for  some  property  —  of  course  you  must 
have  guessed  that.  They  even  went  and  got  an  affidavit 
from  poor  old  Mrs.  Darce  that  to  the  best  of  her  knowledge 
and  belief  I  was  Nathan  Granger's  grandson.  I  knew  all 
about  the  whole  thing  long  before  they  came  nosing  around, 
willing  to  take  it  up  on  a  contingent  fee,  you  know.  Some 
day  there's  going  to  be  a  lot  of  trouble  in  all  these  new  West 
ern  States  about  land  titles;  people  are  so  careless  about 
having  deeds  recorded.  I'll  bet  nine-tenths  of  the  titles  in 
our  town  are  clouded;  there's  not  a  man  in  the  place,  except 
perhaps  Governor  Gwynne  — 

"And  old  Marsh  —  he's  too  sharp  ever  to  buy  any  property 
he  couldn't  get  a  clear  title  to,"  said  Jim. 

"You  can't  tell  about  anybody,"  Burke  observed  oracu 
larly,  and  shook  his  head,  "at  any  rate  —  " 

"At  any  rate  you're  not  going  to  law  over  anything  —  I 
never  heard  of  a  lawyer  that  would,"  said  Sharpless,  his  eyes 
twinkling  a  little.  He  took  an  extreme  relish  in  pretending 
sympathy  with  the  vulgar  prejudices  that  attribute  every 
sort  of  cunning  and  trickery  to  Burke's  calling;  and  the 
latter  retorted  by  loudly  declaiming  against  the  weakness, 


444  NATHAN    BURKE 

folly,   and    corruption     of   the    press   whenever    occasion 
arose ! 

The  newspaper  men,  who  now  occupied  Tampico  in  full 
force,  waiting  on  the  movements  of  the  army  like  terriers 
around  a  mouse-trap  —  or,  as  Jim  said,  when  this  compari 
son  was  made  in  his  hearing,  more  like  mice  around  a  terrier 
trap !  —  proved  a  great  addition  to  army  circles,  an  extraor 
dinarily  jolly  and  companionable  set,  mostly  young  men  of 
some  education  but  more  knowledge  of  the  world.  General 
Quitman,  upon  Burke's  presenting  his  friend,  expressed  him 
self  as  delighted  with  the  new  acquaintance.  Perhaps  Jim's 
political  beliefs,  and  certainly  his  capacity  for  interesting  him 
self  in  other  people  and  their  points  of  view,  recommended 
him  to  our  camp.  "Mr.  Sharpless  being  a  Democrat  puts 
him  in  closer  sympathy,  if  I  may  say  it  in  his  presence,  with 
us  men  of  the  South,"  said  Burke's  general,  in  confidence; 
"and  as  he  is  a  journalist,  I  have  been  improving  the  oppor 
tunity,  sir,  to  remove  some  of  those  erroneous  impressions 
which  he  has  gathered  from  a  —  er  —  a  somewhat  prejudiced 
free-state  press.  Of  course  you  know,  Captain,  I  refer  to 
the  siege  of  Monterey.  Almost  all  the  reports  were  in  favor 
of  General  Worth,  to  the  exclusion  of  some  of  those  who 
also  bore  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day.  I  have  been 
treated  with  marked  neglect  by  most  of  the  writers,  though 
victory  followed  where  I  led.  It  was  our  vigorous  attack, 
Mr.  Sharpless,  as  your  gallant  and  noble  young  friend  here 
can  testify,  it  was  our  attack  on  the  left  that  brought  against 
us  nearly  the  whole  Mexican  force,  and  drew  them  off  from 
the  rear  where  General  Worth  was  operating,"  cried  Quit 
man,  entirely  unconscious  in  the  ardor  of  his  thundering 
periods  that  this  statement  was  as  nearly  untrue,  or  at 
least  misleading,  as  any  statement  of  a  perfectly  honest  man 
could  be.  "  But  enough  of  this !  My  friends  must  see  justice 
done  me;  I  cannot.  I  have  been  silent,  except  under  cen 
sure;  I  say  nothing  to  neglect.  I  wrote  to  General  Felix 
Huston  —  a  lifelong  friend,  sir,  and  one  of  the  noblest  men 
God  ever  made  —  exposing  the  whole  matter,  and  giving 
an  accurate  account  of  the  behavior  of  my  brigade  in  the 
actions  of  the  twenty-first,  twenty-second,  and  twenty-third 
of  September  —  I  can  show  you  a  copy  of  the  letter  —  as 


TAMPICO  445 

a  literary  man  I  should  like  to  have  your  judgment  of  it. 
There  was  a  paragraph  in  the  Concordia  Intelligencer  — 
issue  of  November  14 —  calculated  to  injure  me  —  you  may 
have  noticed  it  ?" 

"I  —  I  have  to  confess  I  don't  see  the  Intelligencer,  Gen 
eral,"  says  Jim,  who  had  never  even  heard  of  this  publica 
tion,  and  who  was  listening  with  the  utmost  gravity  and 
interest;  "if  it  makes  a  practice  of  slandering  our  brave 
and  able  leaders,  I  don't  regret  it." 

"No,  I  would  not  say  that  the  Intelligencer  'makes  a 
practice '  of  slandering  us,  as  you  so  graphically  and  forcibly 
put  it,  Mr.  Sharpless,"  said  the  general,  gratified;  "but  in 
this  case  they  reported,  they  actually  reported,  sir,  that  I 
approved  of  the  armistice.  I  never  approved  of  it  —  I 
would  have  cut  off  this  hand,  sir,  before  I  would  have  ap 
proved  of  it.  In  my  view,  gentlemen,  Mexico  is  ours  —  it  is 
ours  to  dictate  terms  to  this  crushed  and  quivering  country. 
Let  it  be  ours  forever  —  now  and  forever  !  Let  the  banner 
of  our  great  republic  float  above  this  lawless  and  disorgan 
ized  land,  let  the  blessings  of  our  institutions  be  extended 
to  it,  let  the  greedy  talons  of  England  be  warded  off,  let  the 
hardy  American  farmer  follow  up  the  invasion  of  war  with 
the  invasion  of  peace,  and  when  he  surveys  this  luxuriant 
soil  teeming  with  every  —  Good  Heavens,  Captain  Burke,  is 
that  a  tarantula  by  the  table-leg?  Set  your  foot  on  it  quick ! " 

Perhaps  Burke  was  not  sorry  to  have  an  end  of  the  oration ; 
he  was  afraid  that  Sharpless  would  misunderstand  or  under 
value  the  brave,  emotional,  vain,  credulous,  and  heroic 
gentleman  whose  worst  and  weakest  side  he  was  now  seeing. 
But  Jim,  whose  judgments  of  men  were  seldom  anything  but 
just  and  kind,  was  not  unfavorably  moved  by  all  these  fire 
works;  vidi  tantum  —  as  he  might  have  and  John  Varda- 
man  certainly  would  have  said;  he  had  seen  the  world,  and 
was  not  easily  misled  by  appearances.  He  got  Quitman 
to  talking  of  his  youthful  days,  when  he  had  tramped  across 
the  mountains,  a  boy  of  nineteen  or  twenty,  on  foot,  with  a 
knapsack  at  his  back,  to  teach  school  in  the  wilderness  of 
Ohio;  had  studied  law,  struggled  for  a  bare  living,  worked 
early  and  late.  It  was  a  little  Odyssey  of  hard  work,  sacri 
fices,  and  high  ambition.  "I  sold  a  brace  of  handsome 
pistols,  cherished  possessions  —  you  know  how  boys  are  —  to 


446  NATHAN   BURKE 

buy  a  set  of  Cruise's  '  Digest ' ;  an  invaluable  work,  as  I  dare 
say  you  too  have  found  out,  Burke,"  he  said.  "Are  there 
any  deer  left  in  D —  -  County,  I  wonder?  I  used  to  hunt 
them  in  the  woods  all  around  the  town  —  that's  nearly  thirty 
years  ago,  gentlemen  —  '  He  was  silent  a  little,  thinking  of 
those  times.  When  Sharpless  rose  to  go,  the  general  accom 
panied  him  to  the  door,  invited  him  to  come  again  in  a  very 
cordial  way,  and  said  earnestly  at  the  last:  "I  trust  you  will 
not  construe  any  remarks  I  may  have  made  awhile  ago  as  a 
complaint  again  General  Worth,  sir.  That  was  the  farthest 
thing  in  the  world  from  my  mind.  No  army  on  earth  ever 
boasted  a  more  daring  or  brilliant  officer  —  none!  I  have  a 
great  admiration  for  General  Worth,  and  he  honors  me  with 
his  friendship.  I  don't  want  you  to  think  that  I  would  dero 
gate  from  the  glory  he  most  justly  earned  at  Monterey  and 
elsewhere,  sir." 

"  I  don't  think  it,  General.  Your  attitude  is  perfectly  plain 
and  most  just  and  natural.  Honor  where  honor  is  due  — 
that's  all  you  ask,"  said  Jim,  neatly.  They  shook  hands 
with  warmth,  and  Quitman  afterwards  remarked  enthusias 
tically  to  Burke  what  an  unusually  gifted,  intelligent,  and 
high-minded  young  man  his  friend  Mr.  Sharpless  was! 

Somewhere  about  the  third  week  in  February  our  new 
commander-in-chief,  the  head  of  the  United  States  armies, 
General  Scott,  at  last  arrived,  a  fact  which  was  officially 
announced  by  two  or  three  crashing  salutes  from  the  heavy 
guns  at  the  city;  hearing  which,  whoever  could  get  leave 
posted  in  from  camp  to  have  a  look  at  him.  In  this  Captain 
Burke  was  disappointed;  the  general  stayed  only  two  days, 
very  busy  at  his  quarters,  seeing  only  his  division  command 
ers  and  the  heads  of  the  various  departments;  but  during 
and  after  this  visit,  brief  as  it  was,  an  astonishing  increase 
in  activity  and  energy  became  noticeable  throughout  the 
army.  February  25  the  orders  were  out,  and  we  were  all 
to  go  by  sea,  ten  thousand  of  us,  to  the  island  of  Lobos  off 
the  coast  some  sixty  miles  south,  to  make  ready  for  the  de 
scent  on  Vera  Cruz.  Everybody  packed  up  once  more;  the 
familiar  cloud  of  gamblers,  brokers,  circus  riders,  and  camp- 
followers  of  all  varieties  began  to  melt  magically  away,  dis 
solve,  vanish,  after  their  mysterious  habit,  to  reembody 


TAMPICO  447 

again  at  our  next  place  of  sojourn.  The  editors  and  report 
ers  bestowed  themselves  in  any  number  of  weird  quarters 
for  transportation;  Sharpless  travelling  at  the  invitation  of 
an  officer  of  marines  with  whom  he  had  struck  up  an  acquaint 
ance,  on  board  the  U.  S.  S.  Raritan,  which  had  already  har 
bored  an  illustrious  guest  on  the  way  from  the  Brazos  in  the 
person  of  General  Scott.  "What  is  he  like?  Did  any  of 
them  say?"  Burke  asked.  But  Jim  had  been  unable  to  get 
an  opinion.  "Everybody  reports  that  he  gets  things  done," 
was  all  he  could  answer. 


CHAPTER  IX 

"AND  THERE  WAS  WAR  AGAIN  — " 

OUR  army,  conveyed  by  a  fleet  of  eighty  transports  arrived 
before  Vera  Cruz  city  and  harbor  the  morning  of  March  9, 
1847,  and  disembarked  during  that  and  the  following  day  at 
a  point  on  the  shore  about  three  miles  south,  beyond  the 
range  of  the  enemy's  guns,  which  could  only  deliver  an  occa 
sional  ineffective  fire  in  our  direction  —  the  Mexicans  mak 
ing  no  other  attempt  to  dispute  our  presence.  Nobody  was 
hurt,  no  surf-boats  upset,  no  mishap  of  any  kind  occurred, 
and  the  troops  took  up  their  positions  in  the  exact  order 
assigned  —  circumstances  so  remarkable  according  to  con 
temporary  reports  and  in  the  general-in-chief's  own  opin 
ion  that  you  might  suppose  no  such  landing  had  ever  been 
effected  since  Noah  came  to  anchor  on  the  mount.  Taylor's 
old  troops  of  the  Rio  Grande  were  not,  however,  conscious 
of  anything  remarkable  happening,  being  by  this  time  of 
a  proved  philosophy,  and  made  their  bivouac  amongst  the 
shifting  sands,  congratulating  themselves  that  accommoda 
tions  were  no  worse.  There  was  a  high  north  gale  blowing 
which  kept  up  for  a  week,  preventing  the  landing  of  the 
siege  guns  and  heavy  artillery,  nevertheless  a  close  invest 
ment  was  begun  at  once,  Quitman's  brigade,  to  that  general's 
unbounded  delight,  being  assigned  one  of  the  advanced  posi 
tions. 

Vera  Cruz,  an  ordinary  Spanish-looking  city  in  other 
respects,  possessed  the  picturesque  feature  of  an  encircling 
wall  in  mediaeval  fashion,  was  defended  on  the  land  side  by 
the  usual  redoubts,  etc.;  and  seaward  by  the  strong  castle 
of  San  Juan  de  Ulloa,  built  upon  a  reef  of  coral  rock,  squarely 
across  from  the  town,  at  perhaps  a  thousand  yards'  distance, 
mounting  upwards  of  a  hundred  guns  and  commanding  every 
part  of  the  harbor,  which,  by  the  way,  was  full  of  variegated 
and  outlandish  foreign  shipping  at  the  time  of  our  arrival, 

448 


"AND   THERE   WAS   WAR   AGAIN—"        449 

and  continued  so  during  the  whole  of  the  siege !  Our  batter 
ies  were  at  length  got  into  place,  and  the  trenches  opened  on 
the  22d,  when  General  Scott  formally  summoned  the  city; 
the  Mexican  commander,  General  Morales,  declining,  the 
bombardment  began;  and  after  four  days  and  nights  of 
almost  uninterrupted  firing  from  both  sides,  Vera  Cruz  was 
unconditionally  surrendered.  The  American  loss  was  not 
more  than  a  hundred  men,  so  poorly  did  the  Mexicans  serve 
their  guns,  while  the  latter's  list  of  killed  and  wounded  was 
reported  at  ten  times  as  many,  exclusive  of  the  unfortunate 
non-combatants  shut  up  within  the  walls  whom  our  shot  and 
shell  could  not  spare.  The  garrisons  of  both  city  and  for 
tress  —  about  three  thousand  in  all  —  marched  out  with  the 
honors  of  war,  saluted  their  flag,  and  laid  down  their  arms 
on  the  29th;  and  the  same  day  we  took  possession. 

There  were  about  this  siege  none  of  the  sensational  inci 
dents  nor  any  of  that  bloody  and  resolute  hand-to-hand 
fighting  which  had  marked  the  taking  of  Monterey.  Burke, 
remembering  his  own  experiences,  and  also  the  determined 
resistance  and  awful  scenes  of  Saragossa  and  Badajoz  about 
which  he  had  read  in  Colonel  Napier's  history,  looked  for 
something  of  the  same  nature  here,  where  the  inhabitants 
were  still  of  the  Spanish  blood,  if  somewhat  diluted,  and  had 
a  similar  environment  in  this  old  walled  city,  these  stout 
defences.  Either  they  were  greatly  fallen  off  from  the  virtues 
of  their  ancestors,  he  judged,  or  they  offered  an  example  of 
the  house  which,  divided  against  itself,  shall  not  stand.  In 
the  midst  of  the  siege  their  General  Morales  resigned  or  was 
deposed,  General  Landero  succeeding  him;  so  that  Scott 
summoned  one  man,  and  received  the  surrender  from  another, 
the  change  not  seeming  to  advantage  them  much.  It  is  to 
be  doubted  whether  there  was  at  this  time  one  single  man 
or  body  of  men  in  Mexico  with  whom  our  government  could 
have  treated  authoritatively  and  securely.  Half  a  dozen 
dictators  or  clusters  of  dictators  had  risen,  reigned  a  brief 
day,  been  overthrown  and  put  to  flight  since  the  war  began. 
Ampudia,  our  opponent  at  Monterey,  lay  in  prison  at  Perote, 
awaiting  trial  for  the  surrender  of  that  city;  Santa  Anna, 
himself  a  popular  idol,  if  all  reports  were  to  be  believed,  upon 
the  losing  of  a  battle  might  be  in  fell  disgrace  to-morrow. 
We  are  accustomed  to  the  violent  and  groundless  prejudices, 

2G 


450  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  irresolution  and  instability,  the  crazy  humors  of  our  own 
mob;  yet  we  can  always  count  with  confidence  on  the  sober 
common  sense  of  the  nation  triumphing  at  last.  The  end 
less  and  motiveless  changes,  the  factional  quarrels  equally 
bloody  and  futile  of  which  the  Mexican  history  of  this  era  is 
full  —  so  full  that  one  student  at  least  has  never  been  able 
to  make  head  nor  tail  out  of  it,  although  so  much  passed  be 
neath  his  own  eyes!  —  would  be  impossible  to  us.  It  was 
not  strange  that  we  should  have  looked  with  contempt  on 
this  half-developed  race  struggling  after  law  and  order 
with  a  childish  idea  of  blind,  brutish,  enforced  obedience, 
but  none  whatever  of  voluntary  and  manly  subjection;  and 
wondered  that  individuals  so  mild,  docile,  and  patient  as  the 
average  native  should  become  in  the  mass  at  once  so  savage 
and  so  silly. 

The  part  which  Burke's  general  and  his  forces  took  in  the 
siege  of  Vera  Cruz  has  been  described  in  two  lines  by  Scott 
and  other  unappreciative  historians  as  a  brisk  skirmish  result 
ing  in  the  driving  in  of  the  enemy's  outposts  —  which  is 
exactly  what  it  was,  no  more  nor  less;  but  if  Quitman  could 
have  forseen  that  posterity  was  to  receive  so  light  a  report  of 
these  actions,  what  would  have  been  his  indignation!  We 
took  up  a  position  among  some  sand-hills;  and  the  Mexicans 
coming  out  against  us  in  considerable  strength  with  both 
horse  and  foot  were  obliged  to  retire  after  some  sharp  firing 
in  which  they  were  backed  up  by  the  cannon  from  the  city, 
the  engagement  lasting,  I  think,  about  two  hours.  Cap 
tain  Burke,  riding  backwards  and  forwards  from  one  end  of 
our  line  to  the  other  in  his  quality  of  aide,  got  his  share  of  the 
hard  knocks  this  time,  a  bullet  in  the  upper  arm,  fortunately 
missing  the  bone  —  the  only  wound  he  received,  let  me  say 
it  at  once,  in  all  his  campaigning,  and  that  not  a  severe  one. 
General  Quitman  himself  had  no  chance  at  this  particular 
sort  of  glory,  the  enemy  retreating  before  we  could  come 
to  grips  with  them,  something  which  he  certainly  regretted. 
To  have  battered  a  hole  in  the  city  wall,  and  stormed  through 
it,  "my  brave  Carolinians,"  "my  noble  Georgians"  —as  he 
was  fond  of  calling  them  —  at  his  back,  would  have  suited 
him  much  better.  And  receiving  about  this  time  authentic 
news  of  Buena  Vista,  and  the  laudable  conduct  of  "my  gal 
lant  Mississippians "  on  that  hotly  contested  field,  he  was  a 


"AND  THERE  WAS   WAR   AGAIN—"        451 

good  deal  affected,  and  wished  for  the  fortieth  time  that  he 
had  been  with  them.  "The  volunteer  arm,  however,  serves 
under  a  disadvantage,  Burke,  under  a  very  great  disadvan 
tage,"  he  would  say  in  his  depressed  moods;  " there  is  so 
much  adverse  feeling  among  the  regulars  and  elsewhere 
higher  up,  one  can  have  hardly  any  hope  of  recognition  or 
promotion  for  us.  I  went  to  call  on  President  Polk  in  Wash 
ington  after  receiving  my  appointment  to  the  brigadier- 
generalship,  and  I  soon  saw  —  "  said  the  general,  in  a  tone  of 
dark  significance.  "  I  soon  saw !  Polk,  sir,  is  a  cold-hearted 
aristocrat,  hide-bound  in  conventionalities  —  very  different 
from  General  Taylor.  Even  he  did  not  accord  me  the  full 
measure  of  appreciation  after  Monterey.  If  a  regular 
officer  of  corresponding  rank  had  had  his  horse  shot  under 
him,  would  it  have  been  overlooked?  But  my  name  does 
not  even  appear  once  in  the  despatches.  As  to  the  major- 
generalship,  I  think  of  it  no  more.  After  all,  it  suffices  for 
a  man  to  feel  that  he  has  done  his  duty.  The  plaudits  of  the 
multitude  are  naught  to  us,"  said  the  general,  with  a  sigh. 
He  was,  nevertheless,  as  susceptible  to  the  plaudits  of  the 
multitude  as  many  another  honest  gentleman  and  brave  man ; 
and  notwithstanding  his  disclaimers,  the  major-generalship 
for  which  he  longed  —  and  which,  indeed,  he  thoroughly  de 
served  —  was  rarely  out  of  his  thoughts.  Burke  liked  him 
none  the  less  for  that  stout  ambition;  the  young  fellow  was 
conscious  of  certain  aspirations  of  his  own,  although  I  do 
not  think  they  ever  caused  him  one-tenth  the  anxiety  and  the 
heartburnings  he  observed  in  his  superior.  Both  general 
and  aide  were  by  no  means  ill-pleased  when  the  commander- 
in-chief,  a  few  days  after  the  fall  of  Vera  Cruz,  despatched 
Quitman's  brigade  with  a  squadron  or  so  of  regulars  and  a 
section  of  a  field-battery  against  the  town  of  Alvarado  a  little 
farther  down  the  coast,  this  movement  to  be  executed  jointly 
with  a  part  of  the  naval  force  under  Commodore  Perry. 
Off  we  went  in  high  feather  —  but,  alas  for  glory!  In  this 
expedition  we  were  fated  to  emulate  the  king  of  France  and 
his  fifty  thousand  men.  Within  fifteen  miles  of  Alvarado, 
after  a  two  days'  march,  there  came  a  note  from  Mr.  Midship 
man  Temple  of  the  Scourge,  ship  of  the  line,  to  inform  us 
that  the  spiritless  Mexicans  had  already  surrendered  the 
town  without  a  shot  fired  to  Commander  Hunter  of  that 


452  NATHAN   BURKE 

vessel,  upon  his  appearance  before  their  harbor,  and  that 
nothing  was  left  for  the  land  forces  to  do  but  to  hold  it  until 
further  orders!  " You're  getting  'em  dealt  out  from  the 
bottom  of  the  pack!"  said  a  journalist  friend  of  Captain 
Burke's,  with  a  quite  diabolical  grin,  observing  the  down 
cast  faces  of  the  officers.  Sharpless  had  attached  himself 
to  the  column  in  company  with  a  Mr.  Moses  Beach  of  the 
New  York  Sun;  and  both  gentlemen  performed  very 
creditably  as  amateur  campaigners,  marching  and  camping 
with  the  best  of  us,  and  writing  prodigious  long  accounts 
home  to  their  respective  papers,  which  they  managed  to  get 
mailed  somehow  wherever  we  were. 

The  brigade  marched  back  to  Vera  Cruz  within  the  week, 
reaching  there  after  the  main  body  of  the  army  had  set  out 
towards  Jalapa;  and  our  ill-luck  still  held.  For  although 
we  pursued  them  hot-foot,  almost  without  rest  and  entirely 
without  any  kind  of  transportation,  the  men  carrying  their 
knapsacks,  ammunition,  and  seven  days'  rations  on  their  own 
shoulders,  we  only  got  up  in  time  to  hear  the  booming  of  the 
last  guns  at  Cerro  Gordo.  The  enemy  were  in  full  retreat; 
the  castle  had  fallen;  Santa  Anna,  Almonte,  Canalizo,  all 
the  heroic  .Mexican  chieftains  had  taken  to  their  heels, 
except  General  Vasquez,  who  was  killed  in  the  assault,  and 
half  a  dozen  other  generals  who  were  prisoners;  our  General 
Shields  had  been  shot  through  the  lungs  and  was  thought  to 
be  dying;  Twiggs's  division  stormed  the  heights,  Worth's 
was  in  pursuit  of  the  demoralized  fugitives  —  and  where  was 
Quitman  on  this  splendid  day?  It  was  a  bitter  pill  which 
not  even  the  intelligence  of  his  major-general's  appointment, 
so  ardently  coveted  and  received  a  few  days  later,  could 
help  down! 

As  we  advanced,  the  heavily  fortified  position  of  La  Hoya 
with  all  its  artillery  and  works  was  abandoned  without  a 
blow  struck;  and  on  the  22d  of  April  Worth  and  his  divi 
sion  took  possession  without  resistance  of  the  town  and 
fortress  of  Perote,  the  latter  strong  enough,  one  would  have 
thought,  to  have  held  out  indefinitely  against  double  our 
numbers.  About  a  fortnight  later  the  American  army 
entered  Puebla,  and  we  stacked  arms  and  laid  down  to 
sleep  in  the  public  square  of  that  city  surnamed  —  and 
misnamed  —  "of  the  Angels." 


"AND   THERE   WAS   WAR   AGAIN—"        453 

We  stayed  here,  awaiting  reinforcements,  until  the  first 
part  of  August,  to  the  great  restlessness  and  discontent  of 
those  amateur  tacticians  at  home,  who  had  been  so  ready 
with  their  criticism  at  the  time  of  Taylor's  delay  on  the  Rio 
Grande.  Captain  Burke,  who  now  considered  himself  a 
veteran,  looked  back  upon  those  weeks  at  Matamoros  the 
summer  before  with  pity  and  wonder  at  his  own  inexperience, 
his  naive  ideas.  Our  friend  Nat  thought  that  he  had  gone 
through  a  good  deal,  as  much  as  falls  to  most  men,  since  then; 
he  had  faced  an  enemy's  fire,  and  snapped  a  trigger  himself; 
he  had  tramped  weary  miles;  he  had  seen  wounds  and  disease 
and  death  overtake  many  a  better  man  than  Nat  Burke.  Here 
he  stood  alive  and  well  and  roaming  about  the  streets  and 
churches  of  the  City  of  the  Angels,  not  being  treated  in  alto 
gether  angelic  fashion  by  the  senoritas  from  whom  presum 
ably  it  got  its  name,  in  spite  of  the  painstaking  Spanish  com 
pliments  which  he  and  his  friend  Sharpless  addressed  to  them. 
We  drilled  early  and  late  at  Puebla;  we  visited  Cholula,  the 
pyramid,  and  toiled  up  its  steep  road  to  the  church  at  the 
top  that  took  the  place  of  the  awful  sacrificial  temple  of  the 
Aztecs;  and  speculated  and  guessed  in  vain  over  its  forgotten 
builders;  and  dickered  with  the  natives  for  the  grim  little 
stone  idols  they  dug  up  among  the  rubbish  along  its  disor 
dered  slopes.  It  was  a  pleasant  time;  and  I  am  sure  Captain 
Burke  wrote  home  reams  of  poetical  descriptions  to  some 
body,  though  he  never  cut  out  much  of  a  figure  as  a  poet. 
He  used  to  climb,  for  this  purpose,  to  the  flat  roof  of  the 
house  where  we  were  quartered,  of  an  evening,  whence  in  the 
semitropic  dusk  under  vivid  stars  we  could  still  see  the  white 
summits  of  the  two  mountains  that  looked  from  the  other 
side,  we  were  told,  upon  the  "City"  of  Cortez  and  Monte- 
zuma  —  Captain  Burke  found  the  scene  most  inspiring. 
One  of  the  numerous  families  lodging  around  the  patio  below 
kept  a  coop  or  two  of  chickens  on  the  roof;  and  everybody 
hung  out  the  wash  there,  so  that  it  was  not  so  romantic  a 
locality  as  the  reader  may  have  imagined.  Yet  Burke 
fancied  it;  he  made  himself  quite  at  home  among  the  poultry 
and  the  flapping  wet  sheets;  and  a  pair  of  Mexican  mothers 
who  came  and  sat  there  with  their  babies  for  the  evening 
coolness  got  used  to  his  presence,  and  even  welcomed  him 
with  shy  smiles. 


454  NATHAN    BURKE 

These  were  not,  however,  the  only  letters  Burke  wrote. 
No,  indeed;  he  was  very  busy  with  his  pen  a  good  part  of 
the  time  on  his  superior's  correspondence.  It  soon  became 
apparent  to  some  of  us  that  major-generalships,  like  other 
prizes,  are  not  infrequently  a  sort  of  Dead  Sea  fruit,  apples  of 
Sodom  fair  to  look  upon  but  a  great  disappointment  to  the 
palate.  Burke's  general  for  a  while  appeared  to  be  rapidly 
nearing  or  already  in  a  position  where  he  would,  indeed, 
have  been  that  young  man's  general,  but  the  general  of  noth 
ing  and  nobody  else!  The  term  of  service  of  four  or  five  of 
the  volunteer  regiments  being  about  to  expire,  they  were  to 
be  sent  home;  Major-general  Patterson  was  already  without 
a  command  and  had  started  for  New  Orleans,  and  General 
Quitman  presently  found  his  troops  reduced  to  two  regiments, 
and  himself  expected  to  receive  orders  from  Worth  who  was 
as  yet  only  brevetted  to  the  same  title,  and  whom  Quitman 
supposed  he  ranked.  A  man  of  much  less  spirit  and  intelli 
gence  than  Quitman  would  have  resented  these  infringements 
of  his  rights  and  dignities;  it  can  be  imagined  in  what  a 
strain  of  eloquence  the  general  assailed  his  superiors.  He 
dictated  letter  after  letter  to  his  military  secretary,  striding 
about  the  room  at  his  headquarters,  fuming,  scowling,  and 
vociferating.  .  .  .  "My  juniors  in  rank,  entitled  only  to 
brigades,  are  in  command  of  divisions,  consisting  of  five  and 
six  regiments  each.  This  army  would  present  the  singular 
spectacle  of  brigadier-generals  commanding  divisions,  colonels 
and  lieutenant-colonels  commanding  brigades,  and  a  major- 
general  commanding  less  than  a  brigade! 

"  (Paragraph  there.)  I  have  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
general-in-chief  -  (No,  scratch  that  out,  Burke,  I  won't 
say  that)  —  I  will  not  at  this  time  present  my  views  of  the 
humiliating  position.  ..."  and  so  on  while  the  aide  labored 
after  him  through  a  dozen  argumentative  sentences,  wonder 
ing  if  the  general-in-chief  —  to  whom  Quitman  always  ad 
dressed  these  memorials  ceremoniously  in  the  third  person  — 
would  ever  find  the  time  or  patience  to  read  them. 

"  Why  don't  you  go  and  see  him  yourself,  General,  and  have 
it  out?  That  would  save  time,  wouldn't  it?"  he  once  ven 
tured;  but  Quitman  frowned  away  the  suggestion. 

"The  question  is  too  serious  to  be  presented  otherwise  than 
in  strict  accordance  with  military  forms  and  usage,  Captain 


"AND  THERE   WAS   WAR   AGAIN—"         455 

Burke,"  he  said  severely.  And  so,  after  he  had  written  out  a 
fair  copy  —  and  another  for  reference  —  Nat,  with  a  solemn 
exterior,  himself  carried  and  presented  it  to  General  Scott, 
seeing  his  own  general's  anxiety  that  so  valuable  a  document 
should  run  no  risk  of  loss.  As  army  headquarters  were 
around  the  corner  only  a  step  away,  there  would  not  have 
been  much  danger  of  this  happening;  and  our  commander, 
to  tell  the  truth,  did  not  welcome  his  subordinate's  letter 
with  signal  respect  or  attention.  "I  have  no  leisure  for  a 
laborious  correspondence  with  the  officers  I  have  the  honor  to 
command,  and  who  are  near  me,"  he  wrote  in  answer;  and, 
in  fact,  said  as  much  rather  impatiently  in  Burke's  hearing. 
He  had  been  engaged  upon  a  literary  effort  of  his  own,  a 
proclamation  to  the  Mexican  people,  reviewing  the  success 
of  our  arms,  and  urging  a  speedy  settlement  — " Mexicans! 
The  past  cannot  be  remedied,  but  the  future  may  be  provided 
for.  Repeatedly  have  I  shown  you  that  the  government  and 
people  of  the  United  States  desire  peace,  desire  your  sincere 
friendship  —  '  these  rotund  sentences  penetrated  to  the 
emissary  as  he  waited  with  Quitman's  letter  —  it  was  the 
second  one  —  in  the  anteroom.  General  Scott  kept  much 
more  state  than  our  other  commanders;  the  rough-and-ready 
style  had  quite  gone  out;  and  he  never  appeared  even  on  in 
formal  occasions  in  anything  but  the  most  rigid  regimentals 
—  no  slouch  hats,  bandannas,  and  cotton  ducks  for  him. 
When  Captain  Burke  was  shortly  ushered  into  the  august 
presence  and  beheld  for  the  first  time  the  commander-in- 
chief  close  at  hand,  over  six  feet  of  him,  all  glorious  with 
epaulets  and  buttons,  with  thick  waving  leonine  gray  hair, 
with  his  strong  lined  face,  and  what  I  have  no  doubt  the  gen 
eral  himself  would  have  been  pleased  to  hear  called  his  "  eagle 
glance"  —  I  say,  when  Nat  was  thus  introduced  to  General 
Winfield  Scott,  his  knees  should  have  smitten  together,  and 
his  teeth  chattered  in  his  head.  Nevertheless,  he  managed 
to  keep  a  tolerably  cool  countenance,  saluted,  handed  in  his 
letter  and  stood  at  attention  while  the  general  accepted  it, 
not  quailing  at  all,  nor  swaggering  either  (I  hope)  beneath 
the  species  of  casual  glower  with  which  he  was  favored. 

"Oh  —  ah  —  Captain  Burton,  I  believe?"  says  General 
Scott,  negligently;  "from  General  Quitman  —  yes,  I've  had 
two  or  three  from  him  already —  "  with  which  he  tossed  it 


456  NATHAN   BURKE 

unopened  on  the  table,  turned  his  back  on  Burke,  and  went 
on  dictating.  "  Cease  to  be  the  sport  of  individual  ambi 
tion,  and  conduct  yourselves  —  '  were  the  last  words  the 
captain  heard  as  he  went  out  of  the  door  —  with  a  rather  red 
face,  I  dare  say. 

Of  course  the  general-in-chief  was  extremely  busy  at  this 
time  on  highly  important  affairs;  his  every  action,  for  that 
matter,  was  of  importance  in  the  eyes  of  General  Scott, 
whether  it  was  eating  "a  hasty  plate  of  soup"  or  directing'a 
campaign.  He  was  a  very  brave  man,  an  able  administrator, 
undoubtedly  one  of  the  greatest,  if  not  the  greatest,  military 
genius  this  country  has  ever  produced;  and  he  had  before  this 
date  performed  many  difficult  and  brilliant  feats  in  making 
both  war  and  peace,  which  he  was  quite  willing  the  world 
should  know  about  —  even  if  he  had  to  tell  them.  He  had  — 
—  and  deserved  —  the  utmost  confidence  of  all  under  him 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest;  whether  their  affection  also,  I 
cannot  say.  It  is  not  necessary  to  a  general's  success  that  he 
should  be  liked  by  his  troops.  It  is  not  even  necessary  that 
he  should  be  liked  by  anybody.  Witness  General  Scott's  own 
account  of  the  frightful  odds  in  the  way  of  personal  prejudice 
against  which  he  always  had  to  contend;  throughout  his  long 
career  he  was  eternally  at  loggerheads  with  some  base  critic 
of  his  acts  from  the  time  when,  as  a  young  man,  he  was  sus 
pended  from  the  army  for  a  few  months  because  of  careless  or 
insubordinate  talk  about  his  superiors,  to  his  recall  before  the 
military  court  at  Frederick  to  answer  charges  made  against 
him  in  Mexico.  Never  was  a  great  man  so  persecuted  by 
arrogant  Presidents,  by  jealous  brother  officers,  by  spiteful 
underlings,  by  an  ungrateful  public.  He  has  told  us  all  about 
it  in  his  autobiography,  and  surely  he  ought  to  know !  Is  it 
anything  to  wonder  at  that  Mr.  Burke  should  have  displayed 
an  equal  narrowness  of  mind  with  this  raft  of  enemies?  He 
did  not  appreciate  the  general;  he  wondered  that  so  much 
ability  should  be  so  vain  and  pompous;  he  resented  Scott's 
later  patronage  as  much  as  his  first  incivility;  and,  finally, 
although  a  good  Whig,  he  voted  the  Democratic  ticket  in 
1852  when  Winfield  Scott  was  the  former  party's  candidate. 
General  Quitman  was  one  of  those  few  who  never  maligned 
the  commander-in-chief,  nor  caballed  against  him,  as  even 
that  much-abused  gentleman  admits.  But,  in  truth,  Burke's 


"AND   THERE   WAS   WAR   AGAIN—"        457 

general,  who  was  the  most  loyal,  high-minded,  and  kind- 
hearted  of  men,  would  have  sacrificed  all  his  prospects  and 
submitted  to  much  greater  injustice  rather  than  stir  up  any 
kind  of  open  and  discreditable  dissension  in  the  army.  Al 
though  he  did,  unquestionably,  rank  General  Worth,  he  gave 
up  that  point  gracefully  and  modestly  with  hardly  a  word; 
and  with  all  his  ambition  and  his  restless  courage  consented 
to  remain  at  Puebla  in  his  anomalous  position  without  a  suit 
able  command  until  at  General  Scott's  convenience  and  upon 
the  arrival  of  the  fresh  levies,  a  new  distribution  was  made  by 
which  he  was  assigned  to  the  Fourth  Division,  consisting  of 
volunteer  regiments  from  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and 
South  Carolina,  and  a  detachment  of  U.  S.  Marines.  The 
8th  of  August  we  moved  on  Mexico  City. 

(The  editor  freely  confesses  that  she  sees  nothing  " vain" 
or  "  pompous  "  in  General  Scott's  manners  on  the  above  occa 
sion;  nor  anything  elsewhere  to  warrant  the  sarcasms  Gen 
eral  Burke  so  liberally  bestows  on  him.  It  is  strange  that  a 
man  of  Burke's  character  should  have  taken  undying  offence 
upon  so  trivial  a  cause;  that  he  did  is  abundantly  evidenced 
not  only  in  this  passage,  but  at  almost  every  reference  he 
makes  to  Scott.  He  seems  to  have  been  not  ashamed  but 
uneasily  aware  of  this  small  prejudice;  and  clears  his  con 
science  once  in  a  while  by  a  few  words  of  studied  and  per 
functory  praise.  —  M.  S.  W.)j 


CHAPTER  X 

CONTAINS  SOME   HITHERTO  UNPRINTED   HISTORY  OF  THE 
MEXICAN  CAMPAIGN 

DURING  the  following  weeks  Captain  Burke,  whatever  his 
personal  prejudices,  would  have  been  obliged  to  admit  that 
our  army  under  the  new  head  was,  as  a  whole,  regulars  and 
volunteers,  old  levies  and  new,  a  much  more  efficient,  skil 
fully  handled,  rapid-moving,  ready,  and  steady  organization 
than  that  which  the  young  gentleman  had  first  honored  with 
his  company  and  support  at  the  beginning  of  this  war.  Gen 
eral  Scott  had  the  same  means  and  a  good  many  of  the  same 
men  as  General  Taylor,  the  same  country  and  foe,  the  same 
harassing  departmental  instructions  and  misunderstandings, 
the  same  sudden  and  critical  needs,  obstacles,  emergencies  — 
where  and  in  what  was  the  improvement?  I  do  not  know;  I 
cannot  say  that  we  were  any  better  drilled  or  cared  for  —  yet 
unquestionably  we  were  a  better  army.  We  had  put  un 
bounded  confidence  in  Taylor,  a  plain-spoken  man,  of  quiet 
habits,  and  not  particularly  distinguished  appearance;  and 
we  felt  precisely  the  same  confidence  in  Scott  who  went 
about  in  a  prodigious  martial  array,  orating,  dictating,  filling 
the  air  with  sound  and  fury,  magnificent  and  imposing  in  all 
the  buttons,  fringes,  plumes,  and  gilt  trumpery  his  uniform 
could  possibly  accommodate.  We  cheered  him,  too,  when  our 
general  pranced  forth  at  the  head  of  his  staff;  we  admired 
and  respected  him,  gold  braid  and  all.  We  even  read  his 
proclamations;  and  the  minor  generals  or  officers  who  were 
sometimes  invited  to  sit  at  his  august  table  and  share  his 
dinner,  laughed  at  his  jokes,  and  listened  to  his  stories  about 
Lieutenant  Winfield  Scott,  Captain  Winfield  Scott,  Major 
Winfield  Scott,  Colonel  Winfield  Scott  with  deference,  and, 
what  is  more,  with  a  real  interest.  For  they  were  true;  they 
were  true  reports  of  great  and  unusual  achievements.  They 
lost  nothing  by  the  hero's  telling;  General  Scott  never 
spared  us  a  word  that  he  had  uttered  nor  his  most  minute 

458 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  459 

act;  and  after  all,  considering  the  facts,  I  never  knew  a  man 
who  had  a  better  right  to  blow  his  own  trumpet.  Mercy  on 
us,  what  a  solo  did  the  general  perform  on  that  instrument! 
He  had  always  had  the  deciding  word  in  every  argument,  the 
final  repartee  in  every  contest  of  wits,  the  most  prominent  and 
difficult  role  in  every  dilemma.  It  was  easy  for  his  audience 
to  see  —  even  if  attention  had  not  been  called  to  it  —  that 
such  a  man  with  such  abilities  would  have  shone  in  any 
career  —  how  lucky  that  he  had  chosen  the  military!  He 
could  discuss  diplomacy  with  the  Administration,  law  with 
General  Quitman,  letters  with  Mr.  Sharpless  (whose  company 
he  rather  affected;  most  men  liked  Jim),  equally  versatile, 
facile,  and  luminous.  And  both  these  latter,  who  were  as 
different  by  nature  as  any  two  human  beings  could  well  be, 
listened  to  him  with  an  attention  profoundly  enthusiastic  on 
Quitman's  part,  slightly  amused,  but  always  interested  on 
Jim's. 

"Of  course,  the  old  fellow  is  tremendously  cock-sure  and 
arrogant,  I  know  that,  Nathan,"  he  said  in  private  moments; 
"but  what  if  he  is?  What  if  he  does  blow  around?  By 
Jingo,  he's  got  something  to  blow  about.  He's  almost  in 
variably  right;  he's  sane  and  just  with  all  his  gasconading. 
He's  a  big  man  in  spite  of  it.  It's  extraordinary,  such  a 
character;  nobody  could  imagine  him  —  he'd  be  unbeliev 
able  in  a  book,  or  I'd  like  to  put  him  in  one." 

"With  all  my  heart  —  put  him  in  a  book,  do ! "  said  Burke, 
rather  dryly. 

"Put  him  in  and  keep  him  there,  hey?"  said  the  other, 
and  laughed.  "Don't  be  sarcastic,  Nat,  it  doesn't  suit  you. 
Sometimes,  do  you  know,  I  think  you  might  be  a  tolerably 
good  hater,  if  it  ever  came  into  your  head  to  dislike  any 
body  —  oh,  no  —  "he  added  and  laughed  again,  as  Burke 
opened  his  mouth  to  object  —  "oh,  no,  I  know  very  well 
that  we  "don't  dislike  our  commander-in-chief  —  of  course 
not!  —  and  :'n  any  case  we  wouldn't  permit  ourselves  to 
criticise  him.  What,  criticise  our  superior  officer  *to  an  out 
sider?  Never !  And  anyhow,  here  lately  we  have  been  look 
ing  rather  gloomy  and  down-in-the-mouth.  What's  the 
matter,  Nat?" 

"Why,  nothing,  nothing  at  all.  I  don't  know  why  I  should 
look  gloomy,  I  haven't  anything  to  be  gloomy  about,"  said 


460  NATHAN   BURKE 

Burke  hastily,  and  wincing  a  little  under  his  friend's  scrutiny. 
"  Heat,  vermin,  touch  of  malaria,  maybe.  I  wish  these  in 
fernal  Mexicans  would  stand  up  for  once  and  fight  it  out,  and 
let  us  get  the  business  over  and  done  with!  "  he  burst  out  in 
an  impatience  and  irritation  wholly  foreign  to  him.  He  got 
up  restlessly  and  walked  to  the  open  canvas  flap  of  the  tent. 
They  were  in  camp  at  a  place  called,  I  think,  Buena  Vista,  a 
hacienda  and  village  about  halfway  down  amongst  the 
mountains  approaching  Mexico  City;  it  was  on  the  ancient 
road  that  Cortez  took,  very  little  changed  since  his  day.  A 
great  deal  has  been  said  and  written  about  the  beauty  of  this 
capital  seen  from  a  distance,  a  great  deal  about  fairy  spires, 
crystal  air,  Popocatepetl  exalted  among  the  clouds,  the  sur 
rounding  lakes  like  fallen  stars,  and  so  on;  it  must  be  owned 
that  Mr.  Burke,  being,  perhaps,  a  little  out  of  sorts  or  tem 
per,  was  not  much  impressed  by  these  scenic  effects.  Buena 
Vista  —  Beautiful  View,  indeed !  He  surveyed  it  sourly. 
The  village  was  a  sordid  little  group  of  adobe  huts,  pullulat 
ing  with  flea-bitten  dogs,  donkeys,  babies,  men  and  women; 
we  were  as  yet  miles  from  the  city,  and  its  fairy  spires  were 
invisible  to  any  but  the  eye  of  romance.  The  lakes  acquired 
some  importance  —  but  no  beauty  —  from  being  almost 
the  only  water,  except  that  which  fell  from  the  heavens,  we 
saw  in  our  Mexican  journeyings;  the  vegetation  was  the 
contorted  growth  of  the  tropics,  unwholesomely  green  or 
bleached  to  powder,  studded  with  fantastic  flowers,  heavy 
with  tasteless  fruits,  unfamiliar,  unkind.  There  was  a  sort 
of  goblin  monstrosity  about  the  landscape  with  its  unnatural 
jumble  of  altitudes  and  temperatures.  Oh,  for  one  glimpse 
of  the  hills  of  home!  It  was  August  and  even  the  hills  of 
home  would  have  been  more  or  less  parched  and  dusty,  the 
streams  half  dry,  the  air  lifeless  —  but  Nathan  did  not  re 
member  that. 

"  Seems  as  if  we  hadn't  had  any  letters  for  a  long  while, 
doesn't  it?"  said  Jim  casually  —  not  so  casually,  however, 
but  that  Burke  darted  a  quick,  almost  a  suspicious  glance  at 
him.  The  mail  from  the  States  had  come  less  than  two 
weeks  before;  he  wondered  if  Sharpless  could  have  noticed 
anything  —  could  have  noticed,  for  instance,  that  there  was 
no  letter  from  Mary,  nor  had  been  since  —  since  how  long? 
Nat  averted  his  mind;  he  did  not  want  to  know.  Instead, 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  461 

that  mail  had  contained,  a  good  deal  to  the  young  man's  as 
tonishment,  a  letter  for  him  from  Miss  Clara  Vardaman. 
The  thing  had  never  happened  before,  and  Nathan,  who 
would  not  have  dreamed  of  soliciting  the  lady's  correspond 
ence,  was  proportionately  surprised  at  her  offering  it;  Miss 
Clara  was  an  embodied  convention,  a  kind  of  walking  Man- 
ual-of-Etiquette  for  spinsters;  for  a  moment  he  feared  some 
catastrophe  —  the  doctor  might  be  ill.  No  such  thing;  John 
was  in  good  health,  Miss  Vardaman  herself  was  in  good  health, 
everybody  was  healthy  and  prospering;  she  hoped  it  was  the 
same  with  him,  and  rejoiced  to  think  he  had  escaped  the 
hazards  of  this  dreadful  war  so  far,  and,  if  he  would  let  her 
say  it,  with  so  much  honor.  She  was  following  the  movements 
of  the  army  with  the  greatest  interest.  A  great  deal 
got  into  the  papers,  and  was  circulated  about  in  other 
ways  that  was  not  true.  But  one  could  always  tell.  She  made 
it  a  point  not  to  believe  all  the  silly  and  terrible  stories  she 
heard,  and  John  said  she  was  quite  right.  Seeing  was  be 
lieving,  and  she  did  not  mean  to  rely  on  anybody's  judg 
ment  but  her  own.  There  was  really  no  news  in  town.  It 
was  a  little  out-of-the-way  for  her  to  write  to  him;  but  she 
thought  he  might  be  lonely  so  far  away  from  home.  And 
she  was  always  his  attached  and  faithful  friend,  Clara  Varda 
man. 

Burke  had  read  the  letter  through  perplexed  and  a  little 
touched ;  there  was  nothing  in  it ;  it  was  a  sudden  and  rather 
uncalled-for  expression  of  good-will.  She  thought  he  might 
be  lonely;  well,  Miss  Clara  was  always  kind,  and  if  this  par 
ticular  species  of  kindness  seemed  to  him  quite  out  of  her 
character,  it  was  none  the  less  pleasant  and  grateful;  and 
what  did  he  know  about  women's  characters,  after  all?  he 
finished  with  a  whimsical  sigh.  "  No  news  is  good  news,  any 
how.  One  always  hears  the  calamities  too  soon,"  Jim 
went  on,  exaggerating  the  casual  tone  perhaps.  "I  —  I 
was  wondering  if  at  home  they  had  any  inkling  —  if  poor 
Mrs.  Ducey  could  possibly  have  heard  anything  about  George, 
you  know." 

"Hey?     About  George?" 

"  Why,  yes.  Pshaw,  Nat,  the  whole  army  knew  about  him 
there  at  Monterey;  half  a  dozen  different  men  have  spoken 
about  it  to  me.  They  all  say  it's  never  happened  in  our  army 


462  NATHAN    BURKE 

before,  an  officer  regular  or  enlisted,  to  desert  —  Benedict 
Arnold  on  a  small  scale,  that's  how  they  look  on  George,  only 
not  so  dangerous  — 

"I  should  think  not,"  said  Burke,  somewhat  amused.  "If 
George  did  desert,  it  wasn't  to  go  over  to  the  Mexicans  —  not 
willingly,  anyhow.  He  just  wanted  to  get  away  where  there 
wouldn't  be  any  fighting.  Very  likely  the  poor  fellow's  dead 
by  this  time  —  he  couldn't  go  home  —  he  couldn't  take  care 
of  himself.  Let  him  be.  He  wasn't  much  good,  but  he  wasn't 
much  harm  either." 

"Wasn't  he?"  said  Sharpless,  hesitating  and  flushing; 
"I  —  I  don't  know  about  that,  Nathan."  Burke  turned 
around  quickly,  and  for  an  instant  they  looked  at  each  other. 
Neither  had  ever  touched  this  subject  before,  near  as  they 
were  together  in  spirit;  pride,  loyalty,  noblesse  oblige,  a 
decent  reserve,  —  call  it  what  you  choose,  —  some  feeling  had 
kept  them  both  from  questions. 

"George  wrote  home  a  long,  scandalous  story,  a  —  a  vile 
story  about  you  and  some  woman,  Nat,"  said  Sharpless, 
answering  his  friend's  look  with  a  hot  and  shamed  face; 
"he  wrote  to  his  mother  and  I  don't  know  who  else.  It  went 
all  over  town.  People  love  to  talk  about  a  thing  like  that, 
somehow  —  even  when  everybody  knows  that  George 
Ducey  is  a  born  liar  and  no  earthly  account,  and  they 
wouldn't  listen  to  anything  else  he  told  under  oath — " 
he  spoke  with  hurried  and  broken  phrases,  suffering  far  more, 
I  think,  in  this  revelation  than  Burke,  who  had  perhaps  un 
consciously  steeled  himself  against  it. 

"Do  they  believe  it?"  Nat  asked,  quite  calmly. 

Sharpless  made  a  gesture  of  helplessness.  "Nathan, 
I  don't  know  —  people  are  so  —  if  it  had  been  anybody 
but  you,  any  other  young  fellow,  somebody  who  hadn't 
always  been  so  steady  and  upright  and  —  and  straight, 
I  believe  on  my  soul  they  wouldn't  have  paid  one-fourth  as 
much  attention  to  it !  But  you !  It  seemed  to  make  a  par 
ticularly  choice  morsel  for  every  cursed  busybody  in  the  place. 
Believe!  You  can't  tell  what  people  believe  —  they  like  to 
talk,  anyhow.  I  —  I  don't  think  Miss  Blake  believed  it  - 
said  Jim,  evading  the  other's  eyes.  "She  —  I  —  naturally 
we  couldn't  speak  about  it  —  it's  shameful  for  a  girl  like  her 
to  have  to  hear  such  a  thing,  but  of  course  the  older  women 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  463 

all  think  it's  their  duty  to  warn  the  young  ones.  Women  are 
that  way,  you  know.  I  think  it's  likely  Francie  didn't  under 
stand  all  of  it.  But  from  the  way  she  spoke  to  me  about 
George  —  from  various  things  she's  said,  I'm  sure  she  didn't 
believe  it." 

He  paused  apprehensively;  it  was  doubtless  in  his  mind, 
as  it  certainly  was  in  Burke's  that  the  next  question  might 
very  well  be,  Did  his  sister  Mary  believe  it?  And  whether 
it  was  supreme  confidence  or  a  torturing  distrust  that  kept 
that  question  back,  Nathan  himself  could  not  have  told. 

"They  hadn't  stopped  pawing  it  over  when  I  left  home," 
Jim  went  on  after  a  minute's  silence.  "  You've  got  to  being  a 
kind  of  public  character  with  us,  you  see,  Nat,  —  '  Fighting 
Burke'  and  all  that,  you  know.  I  suppose  you  have  to 
expect  to  be  talked  about.  It  doesn't  make  much  difference 
to  the  men;  good  or  bad,  we  take  one  another  pretty  easy; 
we've  got  to  fadge  along.  But  the  women  —  you'd  have  to 
demonstrate  by  every  species  of  proof  known  to  the  human 
race  that  the  report  was  without  even  the  slightest  founda 
tion  before  they  — " 

"Oh,  it  has  a  foundation,"  said  Burke,  grimly;  "it  has  a 
solid  foundation.  If  I  tell  you  — 

"I  don't  ask  you  to  tell  me  anything,  Nat!" 

"But  I'm  going  to  tell  you—  "  Burke  said;  and  he  did, 
the  whole  poor  story  without  reservation.  "You  see  how 
it  was;  you  see  there  wasn't  any  getting  out  of  it,  even  if 
I'd  wanted  to,"  he  finished.  "I  have  to  take  care  of  Nance, 
no  matter  how  people  look  at  it.  I  knew  that  from  the 
start,  as  soon  as  I  found  out  the  poor  girl  had  gone  all  wrong 
—  I  knew  what  we'd  look  like  to  outsiders  —  to  the  world  at 
large.  There  isn't  any  explaining  —  how  in  the  name  of 
Heaven  could  you  give  any  explanation?  It  wouldn't  be 
in  Nature  for  anybody  to  believe  you.  It's  perfectly  reason 
able  for  George  Ducey  or  anybody  else  to  draw  the  worst 
sort  of  inferences.  Jim,  I  had  to  make  up  my  mind  one  way 
or  the  other,  right  then  and  there;  would  I  take  Nance  or 
leave  her?  And  I  don't  see  how  I  could  have  acted  any  dif 
ferently;  and  any  man  on  earth  would  have  done  the 
same  — 

"I  don't  know  whether  they  would  or  not,"  said  Sharpless. 

"I  did  hope  there  wouldn't  be  any  talk,"  said  Burke, 


464  NATHAN   BURKE 

honestly;  "I  cringed  whenever  I  thought  of  that.  But 
now  it's  all  out,  why,  I've  just  got  to  stand  it,  that's  all.  If 
one  or  two  people  like  you  and  Jack  Vardaman  and  —  and  — 
if  you  believe  in  me,  why,  it's  not  so  hard.  And  if  I  find 
Nance  once  more,  I'm  going  to  keep  on  doing  what  I  can  for 
her,  even  if  no  respectable  woman  ever  speaks  to  me  again. 
It's  a  queer  kind  of  false  position  I'm  in  —  but  I  guess  I'm 
not  the  first  man  —  I  can  stand  it." 

The  advance  of  the  American  army,  all  this  while,  pro 
ceeded  surely,  it  may  be,  but  by  far  too  slowly  to  suit  Burke's 
general,  who  would  have  been  "  thundering  at  the  gates  of 
Mexico,"  to  quote  from  his  own  flaming  periods,  long  before 
this,  had  he  been  in  charge  of  the  expedition.  It  is  only  just 
to  say  that  Quitman's  own  troops  were  in  admirable  condi 
tion,  for  he  looked  after  them  with  a  parental  zeal,  and  being 
almost  all  young,  hardy,  adventurous  fellows  might  indeed 
have  been  pushed  forward  in  a  much  more  brisk  and  brill 
iant  manner.  But  the  commander-in-chief  seemed  singu 
larly  blind  to  their  merits,  or  else,  as  Burke  shrewdly  sus 
pected,  that  very  daredevil  temper  they  shared  with  their 
leader  appeared  to  Scott  desirable  anywhere  except  in  the 
advance  of  his  army.  At  any  rate  he  kept  us  in  our  position 
towards  the  rear  of  the  line  of  march  with  a  tenacity  of  pur 
pose  which  Quitman  alternately  set  down  to  personal  dislike  or 
distrust,  to  lack  of  military  skill,  to  the  jealousy  of  some  one 
brother  general,  to  an  infamous  cabal  among  all  of  them,  — 
nothing  was  too  far-fetched  for  him;  if  it  was  a  little  comic, 
it  was  also  a  little  distressing  to  behold  this  high  and  hasty 
spirit  so  fretted  by  restraint.  Fortunately  his  military 
household  furnished  a  handy  and  economical  safety-valve, 
or  nobody  knows  where  the  general's  resentment  might  have 
carried  him. 

"You  may  talk  as  you  please,  Burke,"  he  would  storm  at 
his  aide  —  who  sat  by  in  entire  silence  —  "you  may  talk  as 
much  as  you  please,  nothing  will  ever  persuade  me  that  there 
isn't  something  going  on  under  the  surface.  It's  too  deliber 
ate,  it's  too  persistent,  this  keeping  me  in  the  background. 
Somebody's  got  at  the  general  and  misrepresented  us. 
Heavens!  When  I  think  that  he  may  entertain  the  idea, 
he  may  actually  have  been  brought  to  believe  that  my 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  465 

splendid  South  Carolinians,  descended  from  Revolutionary 
sires,  soldiers  from  their  very  cradles,  sir,  with  a  God-given 
instinct  for  fighting,  ready  to  pour  out  their  blood  to  the  last 
drop  for  their  country  - 

"And  the  Pennsylvania  and  New  York  regiments,  too, 
General  — 

"Yes,  yes,  of  course  —  far  be  it  from  me  to  discriminate 
among  my  gallant  fellows!"  said  Quitman,  hastily;  and, 
indeed,  I  am  sure  he  had  no  such  intention,  but  "my  brave 
Second  Pennsylvanians "  would  have  been  something  of  a 
mouthful  even  for  him;  "but  when  I  think  that  maybe 
Scott  believes  they  can't  be  trusted  in  the  field,  I  tell  you,  it 
makes  my  blood  boil.  Yet  why  doesn't  he  give  me  a  post  of 
honor,  if  not  from  some  such  feeling  ?  It's  a  piece  of  unjustifi 
able  tyranny.  Are  Pillow's  men  any  better  than  mine? 
Are  Worth's?  I'm  willing  to  concede  they  may  be  better 
commanders,  though  they've  neither  one  done  one  single 
iota  more  than  I  towards  the  success  of  our  arms  throughout 
the  war  —  but  let  that  pass.  Only  why  give  them  all  the 
opportunities?  Why  not  let  me  have  a  chance?" 

And  so  on,  and  so  on.  This  was  the  burden  of  the  general's 
talk  from  Puebla  across  the  mountains,  from  the  hacienda 
of  the  Beautiful  View  to  Chalco,  which  we  reached  somewhere 
about  the  middle  of  the  month,  as  I  recollect;  during  the 
succeeding  movement  to  San  Augustin. —  a  frightful  march, 
across  interminable  fields  of  broken  lava  rocks  like  the  bpttom 
of  an  old  volcano,  which  I  have  since  been  told  it  really  was 
—  his  spirits  began  to  raise  a  little.  We  were  now  within 
ten  miles  of  the  capital,  the  divisions  were  so  separated  that 
for  the  moment  nobody  could  strictly  be  said  to  be  in  ad 
vance,  the  mighty  fortifications  of  El  Penon  —  which,  as 
it  turned  out,  however,  were  never  attacked  —  were  in  full 
sight,  the  plains  between  us  and  the  city  were  alive  with 
Mexican  horse  and  foot,  there  was  hourly  expectation  of  a  big 
engagement,  and  it  was  apparent  that  the  whole  strength 
of  the  army  must  be  called  out. 

In  spite  of  this  promising  beginning,  will  it  be  believed  that 
our  unfortunate  division  commander  was  doomed  to  another 
disappointment?  All  day  (the  19th)  from  where  we  were 
camped  in  the  little  town  of  San  Augustin  and  in  the  corn 
fields  round  about,  we  cculd  hear  the  artillery  on  our  right 

2H 


466  NATHAN    BURKE 

where  (as  we  understood)  Worth  was  attacking  the  first  of 
the  fortifications  on  the  Acapulco  road;  there  we  lay  in 
reserve  and  listened  to  it!  At  this  place  the  Mexicans  had 
posted  a  battery  of  over  twenty  guns,  we  were  told;  they 
were  in  great  force  tinder  General  Valencia;  Santa  Anna 
himself  was  not  far  away  at  San  Angel  where  they  had  forti 
fied  a  convent.  The  fire  grew  heavier  towards  evening; 
our  New  York  and  Carolina  regiments  under  Shields  were  at 
last  ordered  forward;  night  closed  in  with  a  drenching  cold 
rain;  and  a  rumor  reached  us  that  the  position  was  to  be 
stormed  at  daybreak.  It  was  the  bloody  battle  of  Con- 
treras  that  we  were  witnessing,  although  none  of  us  knew  it, 
while  Burke's  general  fumed  in  inaction  at  headquarters, 
and  his  aide  rode  hither  and  thither  with  messages. 

True  enough,  the  cannon  opened  again  very  viciously  at 
dawn;  and  in  about  an  hour  or  so,  to  the  great  relief  and 
delight  of  everybody,  although  it  augured  not  too  well  for 
the  progress  of  the  battle,  there  came  an  order  for  the  rest 
of  the  division  to  advance.  It  was  Mr.  James  Sharpless 
who  brought  it,  mounted  on  a  stray  artillery  horse,  without 
any  saddle,  himself  picturesquely  wreathed  in  mud,  a  bloody 
bandage  on  one  wrist,  his  gaunt  face  grinning  out  from  under 
an  infantryman's  fatigue-cap. 

"Good  Lord,  where  have  you  been?"  said  Burke,  aghast 
at  this  apparition.  The  last  he  had  seen  of  Jim  had  been 
early  the  day  before  when  in  company  with  another  enter 
prising  newspaper  correspondent,  he  was  starting  to  climb 
the  belfry  of  San  Augustin  church  for  a  more  extended  view 
of  the  field  of  battle.  "I  thought  you  were  safe  in  bed, 
or  somewhere  all  this  while!" 

"It's  all  right  —  give  me  some  of  that  coffee!"  said  Jim, 
dismounting  stiffly.  "It's  all  right  —  I  volunteered  with 
General  Shields  when  I  saw  'em  starting  for  the  front  yes 
terday  afternoon.  That  is  to  say,  I  just  went  along  —  he 
said  I  could.  I  was  carrying  orders  all  yesterday  evening 

—  I  believe  I  came  in  pretty  handy.     D'ye  know  a  man 
named  Lee  —  he's  in  the  Engineers,  Captain  Robert  Lee 

—  d'ye  know  he  and  I  are  the  only  men  that  got  through  to 
headquarters  last  night?     I  don't  know  how  many  were  sent 

—  ever  so  many.     Let  me  tell  you  what  the  general  did  — 
General  Shields,  I  mean  —  he  spread  us  all  out  this  morning 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  467 

—  we've  been  in  that  stony  place  they  call  the  Pedregal, 
you  know  —  he  spread  us  all  out  all  over,  and  we  built  fires, 
and  kicked  up  a  big  racket  as  if  there  were  five  times  as 
many  of  us,  so  as  to  give  the  Mexicans  a  good  scare,  while 
Smith  got  up  with  his  fellows  and  took  'em  in  the  flank 
and  rear!  Oh,  I'll  bet  we've  got  'em  doubled  up  by  this 
time,  Nat,  I'll  bet  we've  doubled  'em  up!"  He  was  tre 
mendously  excited,  like  a  boy,  crowing,  jubilant. 

He  was  right,  it  presently  appeared;  we  had  doubled  'em 
up;  already  had  that  business  been  completed,  and  the 
enemy  were  scurrying  from  behind  their  works,  before  the 
reinforcements  could  reach  our  troops.  And,  alack,  instead 
of  being  allowed  to  press  on  and  take  part  in  the  movement 
on  Cherubusco,  the  next  object  of  attack,  we  were  per 
emptorily  ordered  to  return  to  our  inglorious  duty  of  stand 
ing  guard  over  the  stores  and  wounded.  "By-by!  I'm 
off!"  said  Sharpless,  when  he  heard  this  news;  and  in  spite 
of  remonstrances,  sped  incontinently  away.  For  once  our 
young  officers  —  and  old  ones,  too  —  envied  him  his  irre 
sponsibility.  "Damn  your  reserves!"  old  Colonel  Morgan 
had  said  on  receiving  word  from  General  Pillow  that  such 
was  to  be  his  portion,  and  we  echoed  him  from  the  bottom 
of  our  hearts.  Quitman's  staff  rode  back  in  glum  silence 
behind  their  glum  general.  "This  proves  that  General 
Scott's  animus  is  directed  solely  against  me  —  against  me 
and  nobody  else,  Burke,"  he  said  gloomily;  "I  intend  to 
have  an  understanding  —  an  explanation.  Face  to  face  — • 
this  is  no  time  for  formalities  or  written  evasions!  —  "  some 
thing  which  his  secretary  was  rather  glad  to  hear,  remember 
ing  the  general's  prowess  as  a  letter-writer. 

All  to  no  purpose  were  these  ferocious  statements,  how 
ever.  Quitman  returned  from  army  headquarters  (which 
were  also  established  at  San  Augustin,  not  far  from  our  own) 
defeated,  incoherent  with  anger  and  impatience;  and  at  this 
opportune  moment  a  petition  came  in  to  him  from  the  officers 
of  our  corps  of  Marines,  pathetically  representing  that  they 
had  left  their  regular  line  of  service  to  join  our  division  of 
the  land  forces,  and  felt  themselves  entitled  to  some  part  in 
the  action! 

"Good  G — d,  what  do  they  want  me  to  do?"  yelled  out 
Burke's  general,  flinging  the  document  on  the  table  in  a 


468  NATHAN   BURKE 

fury;  "I'm  not  allowed  to  move,  myself!  Wv.'re  all  dum 
mies,  figureheads,  non-combatants,  jumping-jacks  —  that's 
it,  jumping-] acks,  and  you  can  tell  'em  that  from  me,  Wat 
son,"  he  added  to  the  astonished  colonel  of  Marines  who  had 
brought  the  request;  "tell  'em  we're  not  to  budge  till  the 
commander-in-chief  pulls  the  wires.  We're  to  sit  here,  and 
listen  while  our  fellows  are  being  killed,  being  butchered, 
by  G — d,  by  a  horde  of  slavish  Mexicans,  and  we  can't  raise 
a  hand  to  help  'em!"  Tears  of  rage  and  mortification 
stood  in  the  honest  gentleman's  eyes;  he  stormed  about  the 
room,  pouring  out  his  grievance.  "I  commanded  myself, 
Burke,  I  was  temperate.  I  said  to  the  general  that  his  orders 
detailing  me  to  guard  this  place  had  cast  a  gloom  over  my 
division.  He  said  my  language  was  unmilitary!  Language 
was  unmilitary  —  damnation!  Was  that  an  answer?" 

"Yes,  but  he  said  more  than  that,  didn't  he,  General?" 
suggested  the  aide,  feeling,  notwithstanding  his  own  dis 
appointment,  a  strong  desire  to  laugh. 

"Oh,  rest  easy,  he  said  enough  and  more  than  enough! 
I  told  him  flat  that  we  had  been  kept  in  the  rear  since  Vera 
Cruz,  or,  at  least,  never  in  any  position  where  we  could  get 
any  credit.  Then  he  got  very  much  excited  and  said  he 
meant  always  to  place  his  strongest  divisions  in  front,  no 
matter  who  commanded  them!  That-  shows,  Burke,  that 
shows  it  was  just  as  I  suspected;  he  hadn't  any  confidence 
in  us  —  in  me,"  said  Quitman,  who  had,  as  I  have  said, 
suspected  half  a  dozen  other  things  besides.  "I  was  per 
fectly  calm  —  as  calm  as  I  am  now,  talking  to  you.  I  told 
him  that  there  were  others  besides  himself  who  prized  their 
own  reputations  and  characters,  and  that  I  was  one  of  them ; 
that  his  orders  allowed  me  and  my  men  no  chance  for  dis 
tinction,  and  that  he  would  have  to  pardon  my  determina 
tion  not  to  sit  down  supinely  under  such  neglect!" 

Burke,  for  all  his  dislike,  felt  a  twinge  of  sympathy  for 
General  Scott,  although,  indeed,  it  was  abundantly  evident 
that  nobody  could  be  better  able  to  get  along  without  sym 
pathy  than  that  gentleman.  So  his  orders  were  obeyed, 
he  probably  cared  very  little  how  they  were  received;  and 
brushed  General  Quitman,  or  any  other  brave  and  high- 
spirited  man  out  of  his  way  as  indifferently  as  he  would  have 
a  fly.  The  quality  may  not  be  particularly  agreeable  in  a 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  469 

man,  but  even  Burke  must  acknowledge  that  it  was  invalu 
able  in  a  commander. 

We  stayed  where  we  were;  the  fighting  rolled  off  to  the 
north  where  they  said  the  enemy  were  making  a  last  des 
perate  stand  at  Cherubusco.  It  was  three  or  four  miles 
away,  completely  out  of  sight,  but  the  cannonading  inces 
sant  and  much  louder  than  the  day  before;  they  said  that, 
excepting  ourselves,  the  entire  forces  of  both  sides  must  be 
engaged.  The  streets  had  become  one  huge  hospital;  all 
day  the  sad  procession  of  wounded  filed  through  —  with 
enough  of  "my  gallant"  New  Yorkers  and  Carolinians, 
one  would  have  thought,  to  have  satisfied  our  general  that 
his  command  had  not  been  overlooked.  Shields's  brigade 
had  behaved  with  the  greatest  resolution,  and  suffered  se 
verely  both  in  the  Contreras  engagement  and  afterwards. 
In  the  late  afternoon  reports  began  to  come  back  of  astound 
ing  successes  for  our  army  —  the  Mexicans  were  cut  to  pieces 
—  our  troops  were  at  the  city  gates  —  we  had  made  a  clean 
sweep  of  all  the  defences  —  we  had  taken  acres  of  cannon, 
tons  of  ammunition,  scores  of  flags,  prisoners  by  the  hun 
dreds  —  Santa  Anna  himself  was  in  our  hands  —  no,  Santa 
Anna  was  killed  —  no,  he  was  running  away,  wooden  leg 
and  all,  with  the  remaining  few  Mexicans  whom  we  had  not 
slaughtered  —  Hurrah ! 

Out  of  all  this  wild  talk  emerged  the  certainty  of  a  great 
victory  —  of  more  than  one  victory,  in  fact,  for  on  that  day 
our  troops  fought  five  successive  engagements,  at  different 
points,  quite  separate  one  from  another  and  each  one  an 
attack  on  strong  entrenchments  against  an  enemy  in  every 
case  outnumbering  us,  sometimes  by  as  many  as  three  to  one. 
The  prisoners  and  prizes,  as  we  presently  found  out,  were 
hardly  exaggerated;  and  in  one  instance,  at  least,  it  was 
true  that  the  Mexicans  were  driven  back  and  pursued  up  to 
the  very  defences  at  their  city  gates,  Captain  Kearney  at 
the  head  of  his  company  of  dragoons  (not  hearing  or  not 
choosing  to  hear  the  recall)  having  charged  them  at  full 
speed  up  to  the  outworks  of  the  Ninos  Perdidos,  where  this 
gallant  officer  was  severely  wounded.  It  has  repeatedly 
been  stated  since,  and  Burke  heard  it  at  the  time  from  many 
who  had  taken  an  active  part  and  were  better  able  to  judge 
than  he,  that  the  battles  of  the  19th  and  20th  of  August 


470  NATHAN    BURKE 

left  the  enemy  temporarily  so  shattered  and  demoralized, 
we  could  have  entered  and  taken  the  city  the  evening  of 
that  second  day  almost  without  further  opposition  —  cer 
tainly  a  great  saving  of  time  and  bloodshed.  But  lo,  at 
this  supreme  moment,  General  Scott,  in  the  face  of  Taylor's 
experience  at  Monterey,  consented  to  Santa  Anna's  pro 
posals  for  an  armistice!  I  do  not  feel  myself  in  a  position 
to  criticise  this  action;  he  doubtless  had  his  reasons  for 
trusting  to  Mexican  promises,  listening  to  Mexican  peace- 
talk,  and  believing  Mexican  representations,  all  of  which 
had  been  amply  demonstrated  to  be  perfectly  unreliable 
time  and  again.  But  what  man  on  earth  knew  as  much 
as  General  Scott?  Or  what  man  on  earth  could  advise 
him? 

Captain  Burke  —  who,  like  a  great  many  others  at  the 
time,  had  only  a  very  confused  idea  of  what  was  happening 
outside  of  his  own  immediate  observation  —  returning  to 
quarters  late  and  weary  that  night,  encountered  there, 
much  to  his  peace  of  mind,  his  friend  Sharpless,  for  whom  he 
had  felt  considerable  anxiety  during  the  day.  Jim  looked 
worn  out,  haggard,  and  begrimed;  but  he  was  writing 
vigorously  with  the  head  of  a  keg  between  his  knees  for  a 
desk,  and  by  the  light  of  an  evil-smelling  Mexican  lamp- 
wick  classically  afloat  in  a  broken  saucer  of  oil.  He  started 
up  when  the  other  entered,  and  almost  before  they  could 
exchange  a  greeting,  began  with  a  grave  face:  — 

"Nat,  you  haven't  heard,  have  you?  No,  of  course  you 
couldn't  have  heard  —  nobody  would  have  told  you,  nobody 
knows  but  me  —  I  was  just  going  out  to  hunt  you  up.  You 
knew  about  the  prisoners  —  the  ones  they  took  at  San 
Pablo  — at  the  church?" 

"San  Pablo?  The  church?"  said  Nathan,  startled  by  his 
manner;  "at  Cherubusco,  do  you  mean?  They  always 
fortify  the  churches  everywhere.  Was  that  where  the 
fighting  was?  I  heard  they  took  fifteen  hundred  - 

"No,  no,  I  don't  mean  them  —  I  don't  mean  the  Mexican 
prisoners  —  I  mean  at  the  church  —  of  course  you  don't 
know  —  we  only  took  twenty-five  or  thirty  of  them,  all 
Americans  —  the  rest  were  all  shot  —  didn't  you  know  - 

"Oh,  you  mean  those  fellows  they  call  the  Brigade  of  Saint 
Patrick?"  Yes,  I  knew  about  that,"  Burke  said,  wondering 


HITHERTO   UNPRINTED   HISTORY  471 

at  the  other's  excitement;    "well,  what  of  it?     What's  the 
matter?" 

Jim  interrupted.  "Nathan,"  he  said,  unconsciously 
lowering  his  voice,  "George  Ducey  was  among  them!  I  saw 
him.  They've  got  'em  all  in  irons.  They  say  they'll  all  be 
hanged  for  deserting,  every  man!" 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  BRIGADE  OF  SAINT  PATRICK 

IT  would  be  hard  to  describe  what  Burke  felt  and  thought, 
whether  surprise  or  horror,  or  a  mere  general  rebellion  of  the 
senses  at  this  piece  of  news.  George  a  deserter  was  easy 
enough  to  figure  —  he  was  familiar  with  that  conception  — 
but  George  being  hanged  for  it!  The  tragedy  was  out  of 
all  proportion  —  monstrous,  incredible.  The  thing  that  in 
any  other  case  would  have  seemed  to  Nat  of  all  men's  acts 
the  most  contemptible,  as  performed  by  George  became 
natural  and  inevitable;  the  punishment  he  would  have  con 
sidered  not  one  whit  too  stern  took  on  an  aspect  of  hideous 
injustice.  Hang  the  deserters?  Why,  certainly  —  but  not 
George.  George  was  different;  nobody  that  knew  George 
would  either  blame  him  for  running  away  —  what  could  you 
expect?  —  or  want  to  hang  him  for  doing  it.  Hang  that 
poor  bundle  of  folly  and  feebleness?  Surely  the  awful  laws 
of  war  were  not  made  for  such  as  he.  The  futility  of  these 
objections  was  apparent  to  Burke  even  while  they  hurried 
through  his  mind;  none  the  less,  his  whole  being  rose  up  in 
protest. 

"I  saw  him.  There  can't  be  any  doubt  about  it,"  said 
Jim,  misreading  the  other's  silence.  "Are  you  surprised? 
Why,  everybody  thought  he'd  deserted  —  you  thought  he 
might  have,  yourself." 

"I  know  —  but  what's  he  doing  here?"  Burke  said  in  a 
kind  of  maze;  "George  wouldn't  fight  —  why,  George 
couldn't  fight!"  His  voice  rose  almost  irritably.  "Any 
body  that  knows  George  —  it's  impossible,  I  tell  you.  If 
there  was  any  fight  in  him,  why  didn't  he  stay  on  his  own 
side?  How'd  he  get  here  f  They  can't  hang  him  —  it's  — 
why,  it's  ridiculous!" 

"A  deserter's  a  deserter,  you  can't  get  around  that,"  said 

472 


THE   BRIGADE  OF  SAINT   PATRICK         473 

Sharpless;  "as  to  fighting,  he  wasn't,  I  believe  —  but  I 
don't  know  that  that's  got  anything  to  do  with  it." 

"He  wasn't  with  them  of  his  own  free  will  —  he  couldn't 
have  joined  'em  voluntarily  -  "  said  Nathan,  weakly. 

"He  must  have  run  away  of  his  own  free  will  —  you  can't 
imagine  anybody  kidnapping  him,"  Jim  retorted  —  and 
neither  one  thought  of  smiling  at  this  grotesque  suggestion; 
the  moment  was  too  serious.  "That'll  all  come  out  at  the 
trial,  anyhow.  They  won't  turn  the  wretches  off  without  a 
trial." 

"How  many  of  them  are  there?"  asked  Nathan,  with 
aroused  interest. 

"'I  don't  know  —  about  thirty,  I  think.  There  were  more 
than  that  to  begin  with,  somebody  told  me,  about  a  hundred. 
They  were  in  two  regular  companies  with  uniforms  and  good 
arms  —  better  than  the  Mexicans  themselves  —  and  they 
really  did  call  them  that  —  the  Brigade  of  Saint  Patrick, 
you  know.  Riley  was  in  command  of  'em  —  they  called 
him  Major  Riley.  I  saw  him.  I  saw  'em  all,  and  they  didn't 
look  like  such  a  hard  lot,  no  worse  than  the  rest  of  us,  after 
marching  and  living  so  long  in  the  open  —  roughing  it  the 
way  we  have.  They  were  all  of  'em  killed  but  these  few  — 
shot  in  the  San  Pablo  fight.  I  was  talking  to  a  fellow  in  the 
3d,  he  said  they  fought  like  fiends  —  he  said  the  Mexicans 
put  up  a  white  flag,  and  these  fellows  pulled  it  down  three 
times." 

"You  didn't  see  any  of  that  yourself,  though?" 

"No,  no.  I  was  just  following  along  behind  our  men, 
and  —  and  looking  on,  you  know,"  said  Jim.  He  went  on 
talking  a  little  brokenly,  evidently  trying  to  collect  and 
arrange  his  memories.  "When  I  left  you  this  morning  I 
thought  I'd  hunt  up  General  Shields  again.  I  understood 
he  was  moving  over  towards  Cherubusco;  it  seems  to  be  a 
sort  of  suburban-residence  place  like  this,  a  handsome  little 
town,  you  know,  where  the  Mexican  grandees  go  in  summer 
time.  Somebody  told  me  it  was  between  four  and  five  miles 
straight  east  from  Contreras.  I  started  off  in  that  general 
direction;  after  a  while  there  began  to  be  firing.  I  left  the 
road,  thinking  I'd  take  a  short  cut  across  some  maguey 
plantations,  where  I  could  see  the  artillery  and  horses  had 
gone  before,  and  then  I  got  all  mixed  up,  and  the  firing  by 


474  NATHAN   BURKE 

that  time  was  pretty  general,  in  every  direction.  I  hadn't 
any  idea  who  I'd  run  into  next,  Mexicans  or  our  fellows,  so 
I  went  on  more  cautiously,  and  presently  struck  the  Coyacan 
road  and  then,  praise  the  Lord,  I  knew  where  I  was  because 
I  remembered  it  from  yesterday!" 

After  this,  it  appeared,  he  had  fallen  in  with  a  body  of  our 
troops  on  the  way  to  reenforce  Worth  at  San  Antonio;  and 
having  been  supplied  with  a  gun  and  ammunition  (he  was 
totally  unarmed!)  at  the  instance  of  some  officer  whom  he 
knew,  joined  them  —  or  followed  them,  as  he  said  —  in  the 
attack  on  that  point,  and  on  the  bridge-head  at  the  Rio 
Cherubusco  where  there  was  a  very  hot  struggle  lasting  an 
hour  or  more. 

"I  think  it  was  about  two  o'clock  this  afternoon  when  it 
began,"  he  said.  "  We  were  in  sight  of  the  town,  but  not  near 
enough  to  know  what  was  going  on  there.  Where  we  were 
the  enemy  gave  away  all  at  once  —  just  like  that  —  it  seemed 
as  if  you  could  feel  them  breaking.  All  our  men  knew  it, 
and  began  to  run  forward,  hurrahing.  It  must  have  been 
about  the  same  time,  or  only  a  few  minutes  later  that  San 
Pablo  surrendered;  we  saw  the  white  flag  run  up,  and  then, 
in  a  second  or  two,  our  own.  The  fighting  went  on  some 
time  longer  on  the  other  side  of  the  town  —  the  north  side, 
that  is,  where  Shields  was,  you  know." 

He  made  his  way  into  the  town,  amongst  many  dreadful 
sights  and  sounds,  and  after  some  devious  adventures  reached 
the  plaza,  and  found  two  companies  of  the  3d  Infantry  in  pos 
session  of  the  church.  They  had  already  converted  it  into  a 
hospital  and  prison;  our  troops  were  coming  in  on  all  sides; 
the  battle  was  over;  he  could  not  tell  how  long  it  had  taken, 
perhaps  three  hours.  Our  losses  had  been  very  heavy - 
nothing  like  the  Mexicans,  though !  —  but  he  couldn't  get 
any  reliable  information;  everybody  was  too  exhausted  or 
too  excited.  A  private  told  him  that  Lieutenant  Alexander 
was  the  first  man  over  the  fortifications,  and  pointed  out 
the  breach  where  they  had  entered.  There  was  a  high  wall 
of  adobe  bricks  surrounding  the  church  where  the  enemy 
had  planted  their  batteries,  and  on  the  flat  roof,  this  man  said, 
they  posted  their  sharp-shooters  who  had  been  very  active 
in  picking  off  our  men.  "The  fellow  went  on  to  say  that 
they  were  all  Americans  and  shot  better  than  the  Mexi- 


THE   BRIGADE   OF  SAINT   PATRICK         475 

cans —  'They  knocked  over  every  officer  they  could  see/ 
he  said,  cursing;  'but  we've  got  'em  now.  They'll  swing 
for  it.  Want  to  see  'em,  mister?' 

"I  didn't  know  what  he  meant,"  Jim  continued.  "I 
knew  they  didn't  hang  prisoners  of  war,  and  thought  the  man 
must  be  a  little  bit  cracked.  But  just  then  George  Kendall 
—  the  New  Orleans  Picayune  man,  you  know,  he's  been  with 
Worth  since  the  fighting  commenced  —  came  along  asking 
where  the  Saint  Patrick's  Brigade  prisoners  were,  and  then 
I  understood.  The  soldier  said  he'd  show  us.  Kendall 
made  some  joke  about  looking  for  some  missing  friends  of 
ours!  They  had  them  separated  from  the  others  in  a  room 
which  was  the  sacristy,  I  believe.  It  was  rather  dark  in 
there;  they  were  standing  up,  lying  down,  sitting  around  on 
the  benches,  making  themselves  as  comfortable  as  they  could 
in  their  manacles,  not  at  all  restive  under  inspection,  rather 
stolid.  It  was  only  a  few  hours  after  the  fight  —  maybe  they 
didn't  realize  their  position  yet;  or  maybe  they  knew  it 
was  all  up  and  didn't  care.  You  can't  help  wondering  what 
a  man  like  that  thinks  of  himself,  anyway  —  or  if  he  thinks 
at  all.  They  say,  you  know,  that  the  Mexicans  bribed  them 
with  promises  of  money  and  an  officer's  rank;  everybody 
was  to  be  a  colonel  or  a  general,  I  suppose.  There's  some 
thing  sordid  and  pathetic  and  ridiculous  in  that,  somehow. 
And  here  they  all  were,  no  better  than  they  would  have  been 
in  their  own  army  —  deserters  with  the  rope  around  their 
necks,  and  the  scorn  of  every  honest  man  on  both  sides !  — 

"Well,  you  saw  George?"  interrupted  Burke,  a  little  im 
patiently. 

"Not  right  away  —  we  didn't  go  in  at  first,  you  know. 
Then  Kendall  asked  the  corporal  in  charge  if  we  could  talk 
to  the  prisoners;  the  man  said  yes,  he  guessed  so,  if  we  wanted 
to,  and  looked  at  us  a  little  curiously.  I  suppose  he  won 
dered  how  anybody  could  care  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
them  except  in  the  way  of  duty.  Yet  our  men  seem  always 
to  be  very  kind  to  the  Mexican  prisoners,  I've  noticed,  crack 
jokes  and  share  tobacco  and  so  on;  nobody  came  near  these 
fellows,  except  one  of  the  surgeons  to  bandage  up  some 
of  them  that  were  wounded.  I  felt  a  kind  of  diffidence  about 
talking  to  them  —  I  didn't  know  what  to  say  —  if  it  hadn't 
been  for  Kendall,  I  might  not  have  gone  in.  But  I  followed 


476  NATHAN   BURKE 

him.  He  went  up  to  one  and  asked  if  he  was  Riley?  The 
man  said  no,  and  pointed  put  Riley  sitting  in  a  corner  talk 
ing  to  another  that  had  his  head  between  his  hands.  'Are 
you  Riley?'  Kendall  said  to  the  first.  He  looked  up,  and 
answered  civilly,  'Yes,  sir.'  And  then  there  was  a  kind 
of  silence,  and  even  Kendall  seemed  stuck  for  something  to 
say  next.  The  other  man  raised  his  head,  and,  Nathan,  it 
was  George  Ducey! 

"He  stared;  I  stared.  I'm  not  certain  now  whether  he 
knew  me.  I  was  just  on  the  edge  of  shouting  out  his  name, 
when  I  remembered  his  mother  and  the  family  and  stopped 
myself.  But  I  must  have  made  some  kind  of  noise,  because 
Kendall  turned  around  and  said,  'What's  that?'  I 
said,  'Nothing,  that  man  looks  like  somebody  I  know, 
that's  all.'  Riley  said,  'Well,  if  you  should  happen  to  know 
anybody  here,  sir,  I  hope  you'll  remember  we  need  all  the 
friends  we've  got?'  This  he  said  in  not  at  all  a  cring 
ing  way,  however;  he  was  quite  straightforward  and  matter 
of  fact.  Then  George  spoke  —  not  to  me,  nor  to  anybody 
in  particular  — '  I  wish  they'd  take  these  things  off  my 
hands  —  they  hurt  me,  oh,  they  hurt  me ! '  and  he  began 
to  cry.  He  was  as  dirty  and  unkempt  as  everybody  else, 
and  he  cried  —  the  tears  ran  down  into  his  dirty  half -grown 
beard  —  Lord !  Riley  tried  to  comfort  him ;  he  seems  to 
be  fond  of  George.  The  others  were  indifferent.  I  got  out 
of  the  place  as  quick  as  I  could  —  I  couldn't  stand  it." 

One  might  have  fancied  that  the  armistice  was  arranged 
solely  for  the  purpose  of  affording  time  for  the  trial  of  this 
handful  of  sinners;  for  the  proceedings  covered  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  two  or  three  weeks  during  which  we  lay  idle 
before  Mexico  City,  and  created  a  deal  of  stir  in  the  camp  — 
much  more  than  the  peace  negotiations  also  going  forward, 
which  ultimately  fell  through,  and  which  everybody  believed 
would  fall  through,  from  the  beginning.  The  case  of  the 
deserters  touched  the  rank  and  file  more  nearly,  and  was 
of  far  more  vital  interest  than  any  sort  of  cloudy  diplomatic 
discussions;  and  the  verdict  when  it  was  announced,  ruthless 
as  it  must  sound  to  civilian  ears,  probably  made  a  very  deep 
and  salutary  impression  on  the  army  at  large. 

The  companions  of  Saint  Patrick  were  tried  by  a  general 


THE   BRIGADE   OF   SAINT   PATRICK         477 

court-martial  presided  over  by  Colonel  Riley  of  the  2d  In 
fantry,  to  which  regiment  a  number  of  them  had  belonged ; 
and  two-thirds  of  the  court  concurring  in  every  several  case, 
they  were  all  pronounced  guilty  and  sentenced  to  hang  by 
the  neck  until  they  were  dead,  dead,  dead  —  an  awful  hearing 
for  spectators  as  well  as  accused.  The  condemned  men  — 
with  the  single  exception  of  George  Ducey  —  were  all  from  the 
regular  army,  and  well  known  in  their  ancient  regiments; 
and  Captain  Burke,  a  little  to  his  surprise,  found  himself 
not  alone  in  the  various  efforts  he  made  during  all  this  while 
to  enlist  the  clemency  of  the  court  on  George's  behalf.  There 
was  not  one  of  these  wretches  so  abandoned  but  that  one 
friend  at  least  came  and  put  in  a  good  word  for  him!  I 
do  not  say  that  this  discovery  moved  Burke  to  any  pity 
or  sympathy  for  the  traitors  themselves;  each  one  repre 
sented,  doubtless,  the  worst,  the  most  brutal  and  degraded 
elements  of  his  class;  yet  even  he  must  have  some  one  good 
quality,  some  poor  grace  recognized  and  remembered  kindly 
by  his  mates.  Burke  thought  he  saw  in  this  a  thing,  small 
indeed,  but  withal  touching,  and  creditable  to  humanity. 
In  that  gathering  everybody  certainly  was  in  need  of  friends, 
as  their  leader  had  remarked;  but  Nathan  had  considerable 
difficulty  in  winning  any  one  over  to  his  own  views  about 
George.  General  Quitman  received  the  story  in  silence  with 
a  sombre  face,  at  length  informing  the  captain  coldly  that  he 
was  exceedingly  sorry  to  be  of  no  assistance,  but  since  he 
had  never  known  Lieutenant  Ducey,  he  could  not  possibly 
speak  for  him ;  that  he  was  willing  to  believe  the  young  man 
was  of  weak  character,  easily  influenced,  and  led  astray  by 
bad  company.  "But,"  he  added  with  that  impressive 
formality  which  he  always  displayed  towards  any  questions 
of  military  law,  custom,  or  precedent  whatever,  "but  you 
will  perhaps  allow  me  to  say,  Captain  Burke,  that  these  con 
siderations  do  not  seem  to  me  sufficiently  weighty  to  warrant 
a  reversal  or  commutation  of  the  sentence."  Which  was 
entirely  true,  or,  at  least,  unanswerable.  Admitting  that 
George  was  a  harmless  fool,  that  was  hardly  a  reason  why 
he  should  not  be  punished  for  the  crime  he  had  knowingly 
committed;  Burke's  private  and  unshakable  conviction  was 
that  such  a  punishment  would  be  a  sad  miscarriage  of  justice 
—  but  how  was  he  to  make  anybody  else  think  so?  He 


478  NATHAN   BURKE 

wondered  if  ever  any  man  before  was  put  to  such  a 
job. 

He  went  to  see  George.  The  deserters  were  removed  to 
the  convent  of  San  Angel  as  soon  as  practicable,  and  de 
cently  lodged  there  during  their  trial.  Some  of  our  sick  and 
wounded  were  accommodated  in  the  cells  and  long,  cool 
corridors  whence  almost  all  the  monks  had  fled  in  dire  panic 
on  the  American  approach.  It  was  a  pretty  spot,  very  green 
and  flowery  now  during  the  rainy  season,  with  a  fountain  in 
the  patio  in  the  midst  of  the  cloisters,  and  some  caged  paro 
quets  and  other  bright  birds  whom  our  convalescents  tended 
zealously.  From  the  roofs  and  balconies  —  the  building 
standing  high  with  a  wide  outlook  —  one  might  see  the  city 
twinkling  in  the  distance,  plains  populated  with  tents,  our 
flag  breaking  into  ripples  overhead;  and  at  night  and  morn 
ing  the  familiar  bugles  declaimed  cheerily  from  point  to 
point.  The  world  must  look  tragically  pleasant  to  the  pris 
oners  these  days,  Burke  thought,  as  he  sought  their  quarters. 

George  was  sick,  it  seemed;  he  was  lying  full-length  on  a 
bench,  his  eyes  looking  rather  wildly  out  of  his  pallid  face, 
and  another  man  was  fanning  him  with  a  sombrero  which 
was  all  decorated  with  silver  bullion  cords  and  tassels,  and 
with  a  handsomely  embroidered  letter  "R"  on  either  side 
of  the  crown  in  the  Mexican  fashion.  The  Samaritan  thus 
employed  —  who  had  as  villanous  a  face  as  ever  I  beheld 
-  was  in  fact  the  notorious  Riley,  leader  of  the  brigade,  — 
Major,  as  he  called  himself,  —  and  he  got  up  and  saluted  when 
Burke  came  in  with  the  turnkey. 

"  He's  got  a  little  fever,  I  think,"  he  explained.  And  added 
with  a  sidelong  glance,  "Friend  o'  Ducey's,  sir?" 

George  raised  his  head,  and  looked  at  his  old  captain,  and 
recognized  him  with  hardly  a  sign  of  surprise  or  any  other 
emotion,  for  that  matter.  "Ah,  Burke,  how  d'ye  do?"  he 
said  in  a  ghastly  voice,  and  sank  back  again.  Nathan 
stammered  out  some  kind  of  greeting,  and  sat  down  by  him. 
Nobody  offered  to  shake  hands.  The  rest  of  the  prisoners 
were  dispersed  about  the  room,  no  longer  wearing  shackles; 
a  couple  played  cards,  quite  half  a  dozen  were  smoking. 
They  looked  at  the  visitor  casually,  knowing  that  he  was  not  in 
terested  in  any  of  them.  Of  this  entire  company  Burke  was 
the  only  honest  man;  and  the  only  one  who  might  expect  to 


THE   BRIGADE   OF  SAINT   PATRICK         479 

live  out  the  week :  yet  he  was  —  to  judge  by  appearances  —  infi 
nitely  the  most  ill  at  ease!  I  suppose  there  is  a  limit  to  every 
man's  capacity  for  sensation,  and,  having  reached  it,  he  can 
not  be  made  any  more  frightened,  or  angrier,  or  sadder,  or 
worked  to  any  greater  pitch  of  feeling  whatever.  Nothing 
else,  it  seemed  to  Burke,  could  account  for  a  calm  which 
would  have  been  called  heroic  under  any  other  circum 
stances.1 

"This  is  a  bad  business,  George,"  he  said  at  last;  and  the 
other  only  giving  a  kind  of  groan,  he  went  on,  "I've  been 
talking  to  some  of  the  officers  that  were  on  the  court,  you 
know,  but  they  —  they  don't  seem  to  be  able  to  do  anything 
individually,  so  I'm  going  to  see  General  Scott." 

George  sat  up.  "You  tell  him  it's  all  a  lie,  Nathan,"  he 
said  shrilly.  "I  never  deserted  —  I  wouldn't  desert.  I 
wasn't  fighting  —  I  never  raised  my  hand  —  I  never  fired  a 
shot  —  you  can  ask  anybody  here.  I've  —  I've  been  a 
prisoner  right  along.  They  —  they  made  me  do  it.  I 

didn't  want  to  go  with  'em  —  I  tried  to  get  away  from  'em  — 
j i » 

"All  right,  I'll  tell  him,"  said  Burke,  cutting  short  this 
incoherent  harangue  as  gently  as  he  could.  "Only  he'll 
want  to  know  more,  George.  He'll  want  to  know  why  you 
ran  away  in  the  first  place  —  before  Monterey,  remember?" 

"I  didn't  run  away,"  George  screamed  out,  trembling;  "I 
never  ran  away,  Burke.  Whoever  says  I  ran  away  is  telling 
a  lie.  Who  said  I  ran  away?  Everybody  is  always  telling 
lies  about  me.  I'm  all  alone  —  I  haven't  any  friends  —  I 
didn't  run  away,  I  tell  you!"  His  chin  quivered;  his  face 
knotted  up  like  a  child's;  the  tears  ran  down.  "Oh,  won't 
somebody  please  listen  to  me?  I  didn't  desert —  I'm  not  a 
deserter!  I  just  —  I  just  — 

"He  just  kinder  straggled  off,  didn't  ye,  George?"  said 
Riley,  interrupting  (to  Burke's  amazement)  in  an  anxious 
voice,  and  not  at  all  satirically.  "He  just  dropped  outer 
the  ranks,  like  men  do,  ye  know,"  he  went  on  addressing 
Burke;  "and  first  thing  he  knew,  he  was  lost  and  wandering 

1  I  was  told  afterwards  by  eye-witnesses  that  the  condemned  men 
met  their  death  in  every  case  with  the  best  possible  composure  and 
decency  of  bearing.  —  N.  BURKE. 


480  NATHAN   BURKE 

'round  in  the  chap'ral  miles  from  anywhere.  That's  where 
we  found  him  —  we  come  along  and  found  him  —  ain't 
that  the  way  it  was,  George?  So  we  made  him  come  along 
with  us,  just  like  he  says  — 

"  And  tell  him  I  didn't  fight  —  you  know  I  didn't  fight,  tell 
him  that!"  George  cried.  He  clutched  at  Riley's  coat  with 
a  gesture  of  frenzied  appeal.  "Tell  him  I  didn't  fight  —  the 
men  made  me  fight  —  I  never  raised  my  hand  — " 

"To  be  sure  you  didn't,"  said  Riley,  "you  keep  quiet, 
George,  let  me  do  the  talking.  He  never  fit  a  lick,  sir.  We 
just  kept  him  along  with  us,  to  do  the  cooking  and  clean  up 
the  camp  — 

"That's  it  —  that's  it  —  I  cooked,  and  I  washed  their 
shirts,  didn't  I?  Tell  the  general  that  was  all  I  did  —  every 
single  thing.  You'll  tell  him  that,  won't  you,  Nat?  Don't 
you  think  that'll  make  a  —  a  difference?  They  wouldn't 
hang  a  man  for  that,  would  they?  I  didn't  do  am/thing,  I 
tell  you.  I  —  why,  I  was  always  wanting  to  go  back  to  our 
army  —  wasn't  I,  Riley?  —  and  they  wouldn't  let  me  — 

"Just  you  let  me  tell  the  cap.,"  Riley  said  soothingly. 
"I'll  tell  him.  You're  sick,  you  know.  You'd  better  not 
talk  any  more."  And  it  is  the  barest  justice  to  say  that  Mr. 
Riley's  tale  which  he  thereupon  delivered  with  many  —  but 
not  too  many  —  asseverations  of  its  truth  was  admirably 
conceived,  and  rendered  in  a  style  calculated  to  gain  credit 
and  sympathy  from  any  audience  unacquainted  with  its 
hero  or  the  narrator  himself.  It  was  an  elaborated  version 
of  what  he  had  already  told  Burke;  George  had  never  had 
any  intention  of  deserting;  he  had  not  run  away,  he  had  got 
separated  from  the  regiment  in  the  confusion  of  the  march, 
to  his  own  great  alarm  and  distress.  It  was  after  nightfall; 
he  had  wandered  about  helplessly,  not  daring  to  appeal  to 
the  natives  for  fear  of  being  murdered,  and  suffering  greatly 
from  hunger  and  thirst,  for  the  better  part  of  the  following 
two  days.  In  these  circumstances  Riley's  party  had 
providentially  —  or  not,  as  you  choose  to  look  at  it  — 
stumbled  upon  him;  he  had  been  a  prisoner  of  theirs,  prac 
tically,  ever  since,  although  consistently  refusing  to  act 
against  his  countrymen  —  a  part  of  the  story  which  Burke 
could  very  well  believe.  In  fact,  the  renegade  chief,  with  a 
captivating  ingenuousness,  acknowledged  that  this  recruit 


THE   BRIGADE   OF  SAINT   PATRICK         481 

was  no  soldier;  adding  that  at  the  trial  George's  terror  and 
bewilderment  had  been  such  that  he  was  unable  to  give  a 
coherent  statement  of  these  events. 

I  am  sure  that  part  of  all  this  was  true;  but  how  much,  or 
how  distorted,  or  what  George  really  did  do,  or  in  what  way 
he  fell  in  with  the  Brigade  of  Saint  Patrick,  nobody  will  ever 
know;  afterwards,  when  left  to  himself,  he  either  entered  a 
general  denial,  or  told  half  a  dozen  different  and  contradic 
tory  stories.  I  am  not  certain  whether,  even  in  the  very  act 
of  deserting,  he  had  any  conception  of  the  enormity  of  his 
offence;  a  man  who  is  honest  to  nobody  cannot,  in  nature, 
be  honest  with  himself,  and  the  Lord  who  made  him  alone 
knows  under  what  guise  George's  actions  appeared  before 
his  own  eyes.  At  the  time  it  would  have  been  manifestly 
disastrous  to  let  him  do  his  own  lying;  but  I  have  not  yet 
ceased  to  wonder  at  Riley's  benevolent  intervention.  What 
sentiment  was  it  of  affection  or  pity,  strangely  enough 
lodged  in  that  ruffianly  breast  that  moved  Riley  to  plead  for 
him?  The  fellow,  blackguard  as  he  was,  undoubtedly  pos 
sessed  both  force  and  intelligence  —  of  a  certain  order;  and 
I  can  only  suppose  his  fondness  for  George  —  who  requited 
it  with  a  perfect  indifference  and  ingratitude  —  to  have  been 
one  of  those  unaccountable  fancies  we  sometimes  see  of  the 
strong  for  the  weak. 

It  now  became  Burke's  duty  to  carry  the  history  to  Gen 
eral  Scott;  and  if  anyone  imagines  that  this  errand  was 
agreeable  to  the  captain,  let  him  disabuse  himself  of  that 
idea.  The  commander-in-chief  received  him  in  his  usual 
stately  manner,  and  heard  him  through  with  patience. 

"Are  you  aware,  Captain  Burke,"  he  said  at  the  end, 
"that  I  have  here  —  "  and  he  tapped  a  great  heap  of  papers 
lying  before  him  on  the  table  —  "I  have  here  an  application 
of  the  same  nature  from  every  one  of  these  men?  I  have 
looked  into  every  case  with  the  utmost  minuteness,  for  — " 
said  the  general,  sonorously,  "clemency  and  humanity,  para 
doxical  as  it  may  seem,  I  hold  to  be  the  first  of  a  soldier's 
duties.  I  have  commuted  no  less  than  eight  of  the  sentences, 
wherever  there  was  the  least  excuse  for  it.  Now  you  come 
with  your  plea.  As  I  understand  it,  this  young  man  says  he 
strayed  away  somehow  or  other,  and  was  picked  up  some 
how  or  other  by  Riley's  brigade,  who  thereafter  kept  him, 
2i 


482  NATHAN   BURKE 

somehow  or  other,  and  more  or  less  against  his  will.  Without 
meaning  to  doubt  you  at  all,  Captain,  that  seems  to  me  a  very 
fishy  story.  For  one  thing,  men  of  that  caliber  don't  burden 
themselves  with  a  useless  prisoner,  in  general.  They  either 
shoot  him  down  or  let  him  go.  And  on  the  other  hand,  he 
doesn't  appear  to  have  made  a  real  effort  to  escape,  as 
almost  any  man  would  in  such  a  position.  How  was  that?  " 

"He  would  be  incapable  of  it,  I  think,"  said  Burke;  "he's 
not  strong  physically  or  —  or  mentally.  He  couldn't  invent 
any  plan  of  escape,  and  force  was  out  of  the  question." 

"You  mean  to  say  he  isn't  entirely  responsible?" 

"No,  not  that  exactly.  But  —  but  he's  only  a  boy,  in 
fact." 

"Only  a  boy?"  echoed  the  chief,  and  glanced  through  his 
papers;  "according  to  this  he's  twenty-five  years  old.  Is 
that  a  mistake?" 

"No,  that's  correct.  But  he's  not  very  mature  in  some 
respects." 

"When  I  was  twenty-five,  I  was  a  man,  Captain  Burke," 
said  General  Scott,  impressively;  "and  a  man,  I  may  add 
without  vanity,  who  had  already  been  of  some  service  to  his 
country." 

"General,"  said  Burke,  "you  were  Winfield  Scott."  A 
remark  which,  I  think,  was  by  no  means  ill-placed. 

If  you  will  turn  to  the  records  of  the  time,  you  will  find 
that,  for  one  reason  or  another,  nine  of  the  deserters  were 
released  from  the  death  penalty,  among  them  being  our 
friend  Riley,  who,  it  appeared,  had  deserted  before  the  begin 
ning  of  the  war,  and  although  he  most  richly  deserved  it, 
could  not,  according  to  Scott's  ruling,  legally  be  held.  In 
stead,  he  was  sentenced,  like  some  of  the  others,  I  believe,  to 
be  whipped,  and  branded  in  the  hand,  following  the  sav 
age  military  code  of  our  day.  George  Ducey  escaped  these 
punishments,  and  Captain  Burke  moved  him  at  once  to 
other  quarters  at  San  Augustin  where  he  remained  in  safety 
and  quiet  until  the  fall  of  the  city.  The  rest  duly  paid  their 
score;  and  I  am  told  that  the  tree  —  at  a  cross-roads  some 
where  between  San  Angel  and  the  town  of  Tacubaya  —  where 
the  Irish  brigade  were  hanged  is  still  shown  to  tourists  in 
Mexico. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH 

HOSTILITIES  being  resumed  at  the  end  of  a  fortnight  or 
so  —  during  which  the  enemy  repeatedly  and  shamelessly 
violated  the  terms  of  the  armistice  and  their  own  most 
solemn  engagements  —  the  city  of  Mexico  at  length  sur 
rendered  after  two  days  of  determined  fighting  on  both  sides, 
September  13,  1847  —  an  event  which  virtually  closed  this 
war.  In  the  final  hot  and  bloody  actions  Quitman's  division 
bore  a  handsome  part,  the  general  conducting  himself  per 
sonally  with  the  most  splendid  gallantry,  charging  the  bat 
teries  before  and  at  the  Belem  Gate  at  the  head  of  his  men, 
and  carrying  them  under  a  murderous  fire;  and  successfully 
holding  this  advanced  and  perilous  position  actually  within 
the  city  until  the  surrender  several  hours  later.  It  is  true 
that  Burke's  general  was  afterwards  mildly  reprimanded  by 
the  commander-in-chief  for  attacking  this  point  at  all, 
having  been  directed  to  move  against  the  other  gate  (the 
San  Cosme)  which,  being  commanded  by  the  fortress,1  had 
been  left  by  the  enemy  practically  undefended,  and  might 
have  been  taken  with  far  less  risk  and  loss.  General  Scott, 
however,  let  it  be  plainly  seen  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he 
did  not  in  the  least  blame  his  subordinate;  who  could  expect 
a  man  like  Quitman  to  remember  instructions  in  a  moment 
of  victorious  excitement?  Certainly  his  aide  had  no  business 
to  make  comments,  for  that  staid  and  strong-minded  young 
person  forgot  all  about  the  instructions,  too ! 

The  war  was  over;  the  Mexican  generals  fled;  the  Mexican 
army  scattered  to  the  four  winds ;  the  Mexican  government  — 
I  was  going  to  say  fell  into  chaos,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it 
could  scarcely  become  any  more  chaotic  than  it  had  already 
been  for  years.  And  owing  in  part  to  this  deplorable  condi 
tion,  the  peace  negotiations  conducted  by  Mr.  Trist,  a  sort 

1  Chapultepec. 
483 


484  NATHAN   BURKE 

of  unofficial  envoy  of  President  Folk's,  by  General  Scott,  by 
pretty  nearly  anybody  and  everybody  who  chose  to  take  a 
hand,  were  prolonged  and  intricate  to  a  degree.  While 
they  went  on  —  nothing  was  settled  until  the  following 
spring  —  the  United  States  Army  lived  at  pleasant  quarters 
in  and  about  the  city,  our  division  occupying  a  big  Domini 
can  Convent,  and  the  buildings  of  the  Military  College  on  a 
street  called  the  Estampa  Jesus,  leading  to  one  of  the  gates. 
General  Quitman,  having  been  made  military  governor  (an 
appointment  suitable  to  his  rank,  and  one  which  gave  him,  I 
believe^  great  gratification),  was  housed  with  his  official 
family  in  the  Palacio  National,  this  being  the  first  and  only 
time  in  his  life  when  Burke  enjoyed  a  residence  of  so  mag 
nificent  a  title.  Our  officers,  indeed,  soon  discovered  that  its 
magnificence  was  a  matter  solely  of  the  title  and  nothing 
else;  the  National  Palace  lacked  the  comforts  one  would 
have  found  in  the  simplest  of  our  homes.  It  was  a  draughty 
old  stone  barn,  scantily  supplied  with  tawdry  old  cotton  vel 
vet  upholsterings  and  hangings,  with  a  huge  melancholy 
dirty  courtyard  in  the  middle  of  it,  vast  yawning  doors  and 
windows  through  which  the  chill  winds  roamed  unhindered, 
Brobdingnagian  ceilings  and  Lilliputian  stoves.  To  make  up 
for  these  drawbacks,  our  palace  looked  upon  the  open  square 
of  the  Zocalo,  very  brilliant  and  lively  in  the  mornings,  with 
a  pretty  market  where  they  sold  flowers  and  birds,  across  the 
way,  and  backed  by  the  pinkish  plaster  fayade  of  the  cathe 
dral;  and  by  and  by  the  Mexican  young  ladies  began  tc 
come  shyly  forth  and  show  their  dark  eyes  and  high-colored 
costumes  in  the  plaza,  and  took  very  kindly  to  the  music  of 
our  regimental  bands  playing  of  an  evening.  On  the  whole,, 
they  supported  the  presence  of  the  invader  with  tolerable 
fortitude,  and  the  spectacle  of  these  petticoats  was  infinitely 
refreshing  to  the  invader  himself.  Lord,  how  wearied  out  we 
all  were  with  the  camp,  with  the  sight  of  our  own  bearded, 
weather-beaten  faces,  with  our  worn,  stained,  dusty  uniforms, 
with  the  eternal  movement  of  our  life!  If  there  had  been  a 
prospect  of  further  fighting,  I  believe  there  was  not  a  man  of 
us  but  would  have  gone  at  it,  with  as  fresh  a  zeal  as  in  the 
beginning;  but  now,  with  nothing  but  peace  on  the  hori 
zon,  what  we  longed  for  above  all  else  in  the  world  was  home. 
Captain  Burke  visited  the  hospital  to  see  a  soldier  of  the 


THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH    485 

2d  Pennsylvanias,  who  had  been  severely  wounded  in  the 
leg  at  the  advance  of  our  storming  parties,  and  informed 
him  that  he  would  certainly  get  the  silver  medal  "  for  bravery 
on  the  field  of  battle."  "  Yes,  sir?"  says  Private  Donaldson 
(I  think  that  was  his  name) .  ' '  Yes,  sir ?  "  says  the  poor  fellow, 
listlessly.  "I'm  gittin'  almighty  tired  o'  these  Mexican  vittles, 
ain't  you,  sir?  I  wisht  I  could  have  one  o'  maw's  dough 
nuts!" 

Being  settled  in  the  city,  Burke  was  now  obliged  to  "turn 
from  the  sword  to  the  pen"  (which  I  quote  from  General 
Quitman),  and  among  the  letters,  orders,  proclamations,  and 
so  on  which  his  general  poured  forth  in  abundance,  the  secre 
tary  took  time  to  write  to  Mrs.  Ducey,  acquainting  her  with 
the  finding  of  her  son,  which  he  did  briefly  and  as  gently  as 
was  possible,  merely  reciting  the  central  fact,  and  leaving 
George  to  supply  the  details.  He  had  been  found  and  would 
go  home  as  soon  as  he  was  fit  to  travel,  wrote  Burke,  fer 
vently  hoping  that  nobody  would  inquire  into  the  manner  of 
the  finding;  what  the  young  man  himself  told  his  family, 
Nat  never  knew.  George  had  to  be  coaxed,  argued,  ordered 
to  write,  as  if  he  had  been  a  child;  he  was  really  not  well  in 
some  obscure  way;  he  would  shrink  and  tremble  pitifully  at 
a  sudden  noise ;  he  was  thin  and  weak,  and  his  face  had  fallen 
into  uncanny  lines  of  age.  "Let  him  alone  —  he'll  be  all 
right,"  the  doctor  answered  rather  unsympathetically  to 
Burke's  questions.  "He's  nothing  but  a  bundle  of  nerves  — • 
like  a  woman;  he  hasn't  got  over  his  scare  yet,  but  he  will 
in  a  little.  Sleeps  sound  and  eats  like  a  ploughboy ;  he  doesn't 
need  any  medicine.  Let  him  alone."  But  if  letting  alone 
could  have  cured  him,  George  would  have  recovered  then 
and  there;  for  excepting  Burke  himself  and  Jim  Sharpless  — 
who,  although  he  disliked  George  as  much  as  he  could  dislike 
anybody,  had  nevertheless  too  kind  a  heart  and  too  much 
feeling  for  old  days  and  associations  to  cast  him  off  —  no 
one  ever  came  near  the  young  man  or  so  much  as  asked  after 
him.  It  had  been  only  a  year,  and  there  were  many  officers 
yet  with  us  who  could  remember  him ;  but  none  of  them  ever 
saw  George  as  he  passed  along  the  streets,  none  of  them 
acknowledged  his  salutes,  he  might  have  been  wrapped  in 
clouds  such  as  we  are  told  encompassed  the  Olympians, 
only,  alas,  there  was  nothing  noble  about  poor  George's 


486  NATHAN   BURKE 

isolation.  The  position  would  have  been  intolerable  to  most 
men;  for  most  of  us,  even  if  we  have  no  moral  sense,  at  least 
set  a  value  on  our  neighbor's  opinion.  What  he  thinks  of 
us  may  be  of  no  importance  to  the  strong,  but  it  is  a  staff  and 
bulwark  to  the  weak.  Burke  used  to  wonder  how  George 
stood  it;  why  didn't  he  try  to  get  away,  to  go  home  or  any 
where  and  begin  over?  Apparently  the  idea  never  entered 
his  head;  he  made  himself  exceedingly  comfortable  in  the 
quarters  Burke  hired  for  him,  took  a  great  interest  in  getting 
his  new  clothes,  linen,  and  shoes,  and,  being  ignored  by  his 
own  class,  began  before  long  to  make  friends  in  other  and 
what  we  call  lower  circles,  to  whom  he  was  very  fluent  on  the 
subject  of  his  wrongs  and  sufferings. 

Whether  these  gentry  —  amongst  whom  there  were  num 
bers  of  those  dubious,  needy,  scheming  broken-down  people 
of  every  calling  under  the  sun  who  followed  the  army  about 
—  whether  they  believed  George,  or  what  they  thought  of 
him,  did  not  much  matter;  at  any  rate,  he  did  not  lack  a 
certain  society,  and  perhaps  a  fellow-feeling  created  a  bond 
between  them  and  him.  Burke  used  to  meet  them  hovering 
about  George's  lodgings,  eating  and  drinking  with  him  at  his 
boarding-house  table,  seedy-looking  little  men  with  furtive 
eyes,  red-faced  bouncing  big  men  in  frayed  satin  neckties, 
glaring  waistcoasts,  and  dirty  linen,  invariably  titled  "Judge" 
or  " Doctor";  who  they  were  the  captain  never  had  a  chance 
to  find  out,  for  none  of  them  displayed  the  slightest  relish 
for  his  company;  they  vanished  incontinently  at  the  most 
remote  glimpse  of  his  grim,  silent  presence,  and  George  him 
self  was  not  a  person  from  whom  one  would  expect  very 
accurate  information  about  anybody.  According  to  him 
they  were  all  the  salt  of  the  earth,  "  great,  big-hearted  fel 
lows,"  inexplicably  fallen  upon  evil  days  like  himself,  and 
Burke  thought  it  not  worth  while  to  inquire  further.  He 
discovered,  however,  that  there  was  one  exception  in  this 
congress  of  persecuted  nobility,  namely,  Thomas  Riley,  late 
Saint  Patrick's  Brigade,  whose  darkling  countenance  the  cap 
tain  recognized  one  day  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Calle  de 
Buena  Muerte  where  George  was  established. 

"Was  that  fellow  around  here?  What  did  he  want?"  he 
asked  afterwards  of  George  whom  he  found  in  a  great  state 
of  virtuous  indignation. 


THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH    487 

"Why,  he  came  here  to  see  me  —  actually  had  the  impu 
dence  to  come  here  and  ask  for  me  just  as  if  he  was  on  an 
equality!  Said  he  was  glad  I  got  off,  and  liked  to  see  me  in 
so  much  better  health.  Can  you  beat  that  for  cheek?  I 
ordered  him  out  of  here  pretty  quick,  I  tell  you!" 

"Did  he  want  money?"  asked  Nathan,  doubting  that 
Mr.  Riley  was  a  person  whom  George  could  easily  order 
away;  but  the  latter  shook  his  head. 

"Oh,  no,  he's  got  lots  of  money  —  plunder,  you  know. 
Why,  that  man  must  have  hundreds  —  thousands  of  dollars ! 
He  wouldn't  divide  —  catch  him!  No,  he  just  came  to  see 
me,  the  low  blackguard!" 

Burke  was  silent  a  moment.  "Do  you  know  Riley  seemed 
to  me  to  be  rather  attached  to  you,  George?"  he  said  at  last. 

George  smirked  feebly.  "Well,  you  know,  Burke,  I  was 
the  only  gentleman  he'd  ever  had  anything  to  do  with,  and  I 
guess  my  manners,  my  —  my  style,  you  know,  kind  of  im 
pressed  him.  Hang  it  all,  blood  will  tell!" 

Whether  owing  to  his  reception  or  not,  this  was  the  last  of 
Riley;  I  never  saw  nor  heard  of  him  again,  so  that  he  may  be 
living  somewhere  in  a  respected  old  age,  or  have  long  since 
gone  to  the  dark  end  he  very  likely  deserved —  who  knows? 
George  stayed  on  contentedly  enough;  even  the  arrival  of 
home  letters  full,  I  dare  say,  of  fond,  incoherent  thanksgiv 
ings,  rhapsodies,  queries,  and  entreaties,  left  him  unmoved. 
Burke  saw  him  yawning  over  the  pages  closely  written  in 
Mrs.  Ducey's  neat,  flowing  hand;  he  did  not  read  them 
through,  and  let  most  of  them  go  unanswered  for  days  and 
weeks.  "What  would  you  have?"  said  Sharpless,  with  a 
shrug,  when  Nat  commented  on  this  indifference.  "If  I  were 
in  George's  place,  I'd  be  pretty  hard  put  to  it,  too,  I  believe, 
for  the  proper,  plausible  thing  to  write.  The  job  of  explain 
ing  himself  must  be  a  little  beyond  George's  abilities." 

"He  doesn't  have  to  explain.  Anything  he  did  would  be 
right  in  his  mother's  eyes,"  Burke  said.  "That's  the  beauti 
ful  thing  about  mothers." 

"I  suppose  so.  And  by  the  way,  Nat,  who's  putting  up 
for  all  this?  For  George's  board  and  clothes,  I  mean,  if  it's  a 
fair  question?" 

"Why,  I  am.  It's  all  right.  I  wrote  and  explained  to 
Mr.  Ducey  —  no  need  to  settle  until  we  get  back  home." 


488  NATHAN   BURKE 

"Huh!"  said  Jim,  thoughtfully,  "do  you  keep  him  in 
pocket-money,  too?" 

"Well,  he's  got  to  have  a  little  something  to  spend,  you 
know,"  said  Burke,  argument atively,  conscious  of  something 
critical  in  the  other's  attitude.  But  Jim  only  ejaculated 
"Huh!"  a  second  time,  and  the  subject  was  not  again  re 
ferred  to  between  them. 

This  sounds  like  a  piece  of  magnificent  generosity  on  Cap 
tain  Nat's  part,  but,  to  be  frank,  it  was  no  such  thing,  the 
provision  he  made  for  George  being  of  the  most  frugal  na 
ture,  and  the  accommodations,  unlike  his  own,  not  at  all 
palatial,  as  the  young  gentleman  speedily  let  him  know. 
During  the  whole  time  we  were  in  Mexico  City  —  some  eight 
or  ten  weeks  —  George  lodged  in  a  house  itself  respectable 
enough,  if  poor  and  plain,  but  situated  some  distance  towards 
the  southeastern  part  of  town,  in  an  old  and  more  or  less 
disreputable  quarter.  It  was  convenient  to  Burke's  eye, 
and  not  far  from  our  barracks,  two  good  reasons  for  the 
selection;  although  I  fear  the  addition  of  a  large  body  of 
volunteer  soldiery,  newly  paid,  just  off  a  hard  campaign, 
and  quartered  in  a  big  city  for  the  first  time  in  months,  did 
not  exactly  raise  the  tone  of  the  neighborhood.  As  usual, 
all  the  old,  regular,  native  gambling,  drinking,  and  other  dives 
were  running  full  head-on,  and  reenforced  by  a  hundred  new 
ones;  and  the  Street  of  the  Good  Death,  which,  Jim  Sharp- 
less  suggested,  might  much  more  appropriately  have  been 
named  the  Street  of  the  Bad  Life,  had  its  share  of  all  these 
iniquities.  It  was  a  short  street  debouching  on  a  little 
plaza  where  there  were  a  church  and  a  gloomy  huddle  of 
pawn-shops  and  pulquerias,  and  blank  plastered  stone  houses 
with  archways  through  which  one  caught  a  glimpse  of  as 
cending  stairs,  and  patios  dark  with  dreadful  promise  —  not  a 
place,  in  short,  where  one  would  choose  to  take  a  promenade 
after  dark;  yet  Captain  Burke  had  formed  a  habit  of  cutting 
across  here  to  reach  home  at  the  close  of  a  day's  riding  about 
the  outskirts  of  the  city,  and  being  armed  and  mounted, 
never  came  to  any  harm  thereby.  It  made  it  easy  for  him 
to  stop  and  have  a  word  with  George  once  or  twice  in  the 
week,  a  kind  of  duty  about  which  I  believe  he  was  rather 
punctilious. 

He  was  riding  thus  one  evening,  when,  entering  the  square 


THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH    489 

and  passing,  as  usual,  along  its  upper  side,  the  captain  all 
at  once  became  aware  that  he  was  being  followed  and 
watched.  In  those  narrow,  ill-lighted  streets  he  had  to 
rein  his  horse  to  a  walk,  not  being  desirous  of  plunging  head 
long  into  some  native  family  keeping  house  in  the  gutter 
with  their  pots  and  brazier  according  to  their  custom,  or  of 
stamping  the  life  out  of  any  Mexican  dog,  pig,  or  baby  who 
might  be  sprawling  about  the  road;  so  that  the  spy  easily 
kept  pace.  In  fact,  his  manoeuvres  were  so  open  that  he 
struck  Burke  as  a  remarkably  frank  or  careless  sort  of  bravo ; 
but  we  had  received  more  than  one  concrete  and  bloody 
warning  against  treacherous  attacks,  and  the  captain  made  a 
mental  note  of  this  fellow's  appearance.  He  was  an  ordi 
nary  peon  in  the  rusty  sombrero,  the  red-and-black  blanket 
draped  about  his  shoulders,  the  skin-tight  soiled  white  cotton 
pantaloons,  the  rope  sandals  they  all  wore;  and  when  Burke 
unexpectedly  caught  his  eye,  he  first  stood  stock-still  in 
hesitancy  or  confusion,  then  turned  and  darted  up  a  neigh 
boring  alley!  "Come,  this  is  a  hew  variety  of  melodrama," 
Nat  thought,  grinning  to  himself,  and  went  on  slowly,  look 
ing  for  the  gentleman  to  pop  up  again  at  some  conveniently 
dark  corner.  Nothing  of  the  sort  happened,  however;  and 
the  captain  would  certainly  never  have  given  the  incident 
another  thought,  but,  two  or  three  days  later,  sitting  at  his 
desk  in  the  office  at  the  palace,  there  was  shown  in  to  him 
in  broad  daylight,  and  with  no  mystery  whatever,  the  very 
same  native!  The  people  came  constantly  to  us  with  com 
plaints  or  petitions,  and,  judging  from  the  nature  of  some  of 
these,  I  doubt  if  the  city  of  Mexico  had  ever  received  so 
just  and  stable  a  government  as  during  its  occupation  by 
the  United  States  Army;  but  Burke  imagined  this  case  to 
be  something  out  of  the  ordinary. 

"  Ya  he  le  visto,"  said  he,  briskly,  not  proposing  to  allow 
any  beating  about  the  bush;  "esta  el  hombre  que  me  era 
siguiendo  la  noche.  Porque  f  Que  quiere  f  " 

The  man,  who  had  a  rather  dull  but  not  at  all  vicious  face, 
answered  humbly.  Yes,  he  had  been  following  the  Seilor 
Coronel,  but  he  meant  no  harm,  he  would  swear  by  the 
Virgin  of  Guadalupe,  he  meant  no  harm.  He  was  an  honest 
man.  He  wanted  to  look  at  the  Sefior  Coronel. 

"To  look  at  me?"  repeated  Burke,  incredulously. 


490  NATHAN   BURKE 

Pero,  si!  He  had  been  told  to  find  a  senor  capitan  Burke 
—  but  that  must  have  been  a  mistake,  for  it  was  coronel  and 
not  capitan  at  all  —  who  was  a  tall  man  with  blue  eyes. 
And  they  called  him  —  as  one  might  say,  senor  —  el  Peleador 
—  that  is,  as  one  might  say,  el  gran  guerrero  —  he  did  not 
know  the  English  word  — 

'"  Fighting  Burke '  —  I  knowT,"  said  Nat,  with  impatience, 
"well?" 

Yes,  that  was  it.  He  had  been  looking  a  long  while;  he 
was  a  hard-working  man,  he  worked  all  day,  and  so  he  had 
to  hunt  for  the  senor  in  the  evenings,  when  he  went  to  and 
from  the  shop,  because  he  had  no  other  time.  He  was  a 
tailor  and  worked  in  the  Sastreria  del  Espiritu  Santo,  in  the 
street  of  that  name.  You  could  ask  the  patron  about  him  — 
ask  whether  Pablo  Suinaga  was  not  an  honest  man. 

"All  right/'  said  Nat,  "go  ahead  with  it.  What  do  you 
want  of  me?" 

"Senor,"  said  Pablo  Suinaga,  respectfully,  "the  slow 
carrier  never  spills  the  water.  First  of  all  I  was  to  make 
sure  that  you  were  the  right  man  —  and  that  has  been  a  little 
hard,  seeing  that  I  cannot  speak  English,  but  I  have  it 
written  down  —  "  saying  which  he  produced  a  dirty  bit  of 
paper  with  "Captain  Nathan  Burke"  scrawled  upon  it,  and 
spread  it  under  the  other's  eyes ;  he  seemed  to  regard  it  as  a 
kind  of  talisman,  for  he  drew  back  when  Burke  put  out  a 
hand,  plainly  averse  to  his  touching  it.  "Esta  usted,  verdad, 
senor?"  he  asked  earnestly. 

"That  is  my  name,"  said  Burke,  profoundly  puzzled,  "all 
you  had  to  do  was  to  show  it  to  somebody." 

"Senor,  con  permiso,  there  is  another  Capitan  Burke,  and 
I  found  him  first,  only  he  was  dead!"  This  was  true,  that 
officer  having  been  killed,  I  think,  at  Molino  del  Rey;  and 
Pablo  recited  the  tale  of  his  search  and  disappointment, 
and  consequent  loss  of  time  with  great  feeling,  notwithstand 
ing  the  fact  that  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter  in 
hand.  But  Burke  had  to  resign  himself;  it  always  took  any 
one  of  them  an  inordinate  time,  with  countless  repetitions 
and  embellishments,  to  get  to  the  core  of  his  affair,  whatever 
that  might  be.  Suinaga  said  that  he  lived  in  the  Calle 
Higuera  —  "you  know  that  street,  senor,  two  or  three  times 
you  have  ridden  through  it  on  your  horse,  it  runs  the  same  as 


THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH    491 

Buena  Muerte,  only  farther  east.  I  have  a  wife  and  three 
children,  and  we  are  honest  people,  Senor  Coronel,  but  the 
others  in  the  house  —  "  he  spread  his  hands  and  indulged  in 
an  almost  too  expressive  pantomime,  "they  are  not  honest, 
por  Diets,  no !  All  like  that,  the  women  worse  than  the  men. 
I  have  told  my  wife  not  to  have  anything  to  do  with  them, 
but  women !  Telling  is  no  good,  you  have  to  take  a  stick  to 
them.  Vaya,  senor,  you  know  how  that  is,  without  doubt! 
One  day,  six  —  eight  months  ago  my  wife  told  me,  'Pablo, 
there  is  a  new  young  woman  on  the  top  floor.'  I  said,  '  Well, 
and  if  there  is?  Talvez  es  una  ramera  como  las  demas.  Let 
her  alone.'  She  said,  'But  this  one  is  white,  and  I  think 
she  is  Americanita.'  Says  I,  'That  doesn't  keep  her  from 
being  a  —  —  as  I  said.  Calla,  mujer  !  I  don't  want  to  hear 
any  more  about  her!'  That  was  the  end  of  it  for  a  while; 
but  in  two  or  three  weeks  she  began  again,  '  Pablo,  that  girl  is 
sick.  She  coughs,  coughs  all  the  time,  pobrecita ! '  Said  I  : 
'Sick,  is  she?  She  would  be  better  dead,  and  burning  in  hell 
for  her  sins.  I  tell  you,  let  her  alone.'  'Hombre  de  Dios!' 
says  she,  '  is  that  a  Christian  way  to  talk? '  And  after  that, 
senor,  do  what  I  would  and  say  what  I  would,  my  wife  went 
to  see  her  and  cooked  food  and  took  it  to  her,  and  nursed  her 
like  her  own  sister  — lo  que  son  las  mujer  es  /" 

"Well?"  said  Burke, patiently. 

"Well,  senor,  she  began  to  be  very  much  sicker  after  a 
while,  in  spite  of  everything  my  wife  did.  She  had  fever,  and 
she  coughed  blood,  and  the  clothes  would  be  wet  on  her  as 
she  lay  in  the  bed  —  wet  like  rain.  That  was  in  the  summer 
and  she  has  got  worse  since;  she  cannot  live.  Everybody 
in  the  house  and  in  the  whole  street  has  been  kind;  we  have 
all  gone  and  told  her  she  was  going  to  die,  and  offered  to  get 
Padre  Felipe,  so  that  she  can  die  with  the  Sacrament,  but 
she  won't  hear  of  it.  I  myself  have  told  her  over  and  over 
again,  but  she  only  says  she  would  get  well  if  she  could  go 
back  to  where  she  comes  from;  and  that  when  the  army 
came,  she  would  go  back  to  your  country,  senor,  for  she  is 
Americanita,  as  my  wife  thought.  She  has  always  seemed  to 
be  quite  sure  your  army  would  come  —  and  that  is  another 
sign  she  cannot  live.  They  who  are  about  to  die  see  things  — • 
quien  sabe  f  Mire,  senor :  when  the  fighting  began,  she  heard 
the  cannon  before  anybody  else,  and  said,  '  They  are  coming ! ' 


492  NATHAN   BURKE 

Then  after  your  soldiers  came  into  the  city,  she  asked  me  to 
look  for  you,  and  she  gave  me  that  paper  — 

"  What's  her  name?"  Burke  interrupted  him  suddenly. 

The  man  didn't  know;  he  had  never  heard  her  called  any 
thing  more  than  "Nina"  or  "Senorita, "  the  common  form  of 
addressing  women  in  that  country,  where  a  surname  is  the 
last  thing  one  needs.  She  had  black  eyes  and  hair,  he  said  — 
ah!  The  Sen  or  Coronel  knew  her? 

"I  think  so,"  said  Burke. 

Pablo  Suinaga  said  he  was  very  glad,  and  plainly  meant  it. 
He  had  had  a  long  hunt.  It  was  some  time  before  he  found 
out  for  a  certainty  that  the  other  Burke  was  not  the  right 
man,  although  the  sick  woman  steadfastly  refused  to  believe 
it;  and  it  was  she  herself,  finally  who,  sitting  propped  up  by  a 
window  —  "she  could  not  get  her  breath  otherwise"  —  had 
caught  sight  of  Burke  as  he  rode  past,  and  had  screamed  out 
that  that  was  the  man.  "Pues,  senor,  even  after  I  fol 
lowed  you,  and  found  out  your  name  by  questioning  at  that 
house  where  you  stopped,  —  after  all  that,  she  wasn't  certain 
whether  she  wanted  to  see  you,  and  was  in  twenty  minds 
about  it  from  one  hour  to  the  next — lo  que  son  las  mujeres!" 

"She  wants  to  see  me  now,  though?"  said  Burke. 

"Oh,  yes,  she  says  you  will  take  her  back  to  your  country 
—  and  she  cannot  last  another  week!" 

Burke  went  that  night  under  Suinaga's  guidance  to  the 
house  in  the  Calle  Higuera,  which  was  the  sort  of  place  to  be 
expected,  running  over  with  men,  women,  and  children,  full 
of  discordant  outcry,  foul  sights,  foul  sounds,  foul  smells, 
an  Inferno  of  dirt  and  vice.  The  stage  was  set  most  suitably 
for  the  closing  act  of  the  wretched  drama,  nor  could  any  one 
have  asked  (I  suppose)  a  sharper  moral  lesson  than  that  con 
veyed  by  Nance  Darnell's  end;  it  would  have  satisfied  even 
Mrs.  Ducey,  or  any  other  good  and  pure  woman.  Two  or 
three  of  the  women  and  a  tribe  of  children,  seeing  the  blue 
uniform  and  shoulder-straps  in  Suinaga's  company,  joined 
and  trailed  after  us  along  the  grimy  stairs  and  corridors, 
curious  and  voluble  in  their  high  chittering  Mexican  voices. 
Nat  heard  the  youngsters  quarrelling  and  insisting  and  asking 
questions.  "Is  she  dead?  You  said  I  could  see  her  when 
she  was  dead  —  yes,  you  did,  you  did  !  Oigd !  Antonio  ! 


THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH    493 

She's  dead,  and  I'm  going  to  see  her.  Come  along! "  "  You 
lie  —  she  is  not  dead.  Manuel  has  seen  her,  Manuel  Gar- 
fias.  She  lies  on  the  bed  with  her  eyes  rolled  up,  and  her 
mouth  open,  but  she's  not  dead.  They  have  no  candles  at 
her  head  and  feet  —  she's  not  dead  yet,  is  she,  Manuelito?" 
"  Tonto  !  They  would  not  have  candles  for  her  —  she  is  a 
heretic  —  all  the  Llankies  are  heretics,  tio  Juan  told  me  so." 
" She's  dead,  I  tell  you!"  "She's  not  —  she  goes  this  way 
in  her  throat  —  Grr-ugh!  Grr-ugh — agh!"  "Who  is  the 
senor  in  the  blue  coat?  Ask  him  for  a  centavo  —  all  the 
Americanos  are  rich  —  their  houses  are  made  of  gold." 
"Senor,  I  am  very  poor,  and  sick  and  starving.  For  the  love 
of  God  give  me  a  little  something!"  "To  me,  too,  senor. 
My  mother  is  sick  and  my  father  is  sick,  and  we  have  nothing 
to  eat  — !"  They  clung  about  his  knees,  whining.  "I 
will  pay  you  all  to  go  away,"  he  said,  sick  at  heart;  "and 
every  one  that  stays  away  shall  have  double  when  I  go,  but 
if  he  comes  back  in  the  meanwhile,  nada!"  The  bargain 
was  soon  struck,  while  the  women  looked  on  and  laughed. 

"You  be  off,  too,  all  of  you!"  said  the  tailor,  turning  at  the 
threshold  of  one  of  the  squalid  dens  they  called  rooms;  he 
seemed  to  have  some  misty  idea  of  the  decencies  of  the 
moment,  and  was,  perhaps,  a  man  to  be  obeyed.  "The 
senor  wants  to  see  her  by  herself.  Santa  Maria,  must  I 
speak  twice,  then?  Salgan,  ustedes,  todas  ! " 

They  scattered  screeching  and  some  of  them  giggling. 
Burke  went  into  the  room  and  went  up  to  the  pallet-bed 
which  was  huddled  by  the  window  —  the  sashless  and  un- 
glazed  hole  in  the  wall  that  served  that  purpose,  that  is. 
There  was  a  light  burning  and  smoking  near  by;  Nance  lay 
in  the  attitude  he  had  heard  one  of  the  boys  describe,  asleep 
or  at  least  unconscious.  She  was  so  changed,  he  would 
hardly  have  known  her.  He  stood  looking  down  at  her. 
We  hear  a  great  deal  from  poetry  and  romance  about  the 
awful  beauty  and  majesty  of  death;  yet  believe  me,  it  is 
only  in  books  that  the  article  and  act  of  dying  is  any 
way  majestic  or  aught  but  pitiful.  This  body  gives 
up  its  hold  with  such  dishonorable  struggles,  with  such 
slow  and  painful  disfigurement,  as  the  senses  shrink  to 
witness;  and  if  we  would  be  plain  with  ourselves,  we  must 
acknowledge  that  not  all  our  creeds,  nor  the  belief  in  heaven 


494  NATHAN   BURKE 

and  immortality  and  choiring  angels  can  gild  the  physical 
hideousness  of  our  end.  So  ghastly  was  Nance's  aspect  that 
the  young  man  thought  for  an  instant  the  end  had  really 
come;  but  she  roused  at  his  exclamation,  and  opened  her 
eyes,  which  looked  very  large  and  brilliant,  and  fixed  them 
on  him. 

"Nance,  do  you  know  me?"  he  asked,  for,  in  spite  of  the 
brightness  of  her  look,  there  was  something  singularly  blank 
and  distant  in  it. 

She  made  a  fluttering  movement  with  her  right  hand  which 
Burke  recognized  as  an  effort  to  put  it  out;  and  said  in  a 
voice  which  to  his  surprise  sounded  quite  strong  and  natural  : 
"  Of  course  I  know  ye,  Nat.  I  reckoned  you'd  come.  Won't 
ye  set?  Set  down  here  by  th'  bed." 

Burke  obeyed  dumbly,  and  took  her  clammy  cold  hand  in 
his;  he  was  a  good  deal  moved,  but  Nance  herself  not  at 
all,  apparently;  she  lay  and  looked  at  him  without  emotion 
in  that  calm  of  defeat  which  death  seems  to  allow  alike  to 
saints  and  sinners,  accompanying  the  most  ominous  features 
of  illness  with  a  merciful  blunting  of  the  understanding. 
"  Lord,  let  me  know  mine  end,  and  of  my  days  the  number  — 
but  did  any  man  ever  make  that  prayer  in  earnest,  or  realize 
that  dissolution  was  upon  him?  That  Nance  did  not  was 
made  clear  almost  by  the  first  words  she  uttered. 

"I  been  right  poorly,  Nathan,  but  I'm  feeling  a  little  mite 
better  this  last  week.  I  guess  I'll  be  up  pretty  soon  now. 
I  look  kinder  peaked,  don't  I?" 

"Yes,  you  —  you  show  you've  been  sick,"  Burke  said. 

"I  didn't  'low  I'd  ever  bother  you  agin,  Nat,  but  then  I 
wasn't  lookin'  out  for  bein'  sick,  y'  know.  Person  feels 
diff'rent  'bout  a  thing  like  that  when  they're  sick,  somehow. 
Seemed,  as  long  as  th'  army  was  right  here,  V  you  was  here, 
'twouldn't  do  no  harm  for  to  let  you  know,  anyways.  Tell 
ye,  Nathan,  I  was  pretty  nigh  crazy  to  see  a  white  man,  let 
alone  you.  Th'  people  'a'  been  reel  kind,  but  shucks! 
they're  Mexicans  —  you  know  what  they  are.  They  mean 
well,  but  for  a  while  here  they  had  me  plumb  scairt,  talkin' 
'bout  dyin'.  That  was  before  I  begun  to  git  better,  y' 
know.  I  jest  c'ldn't  stand  it  —  I  had  to  send  for  you." 

She  could  get  through  this  explanation  only  by  pausing 
many  times  with  painful  gasps  and  chokings,  her  voice  lessen- 


THE  STREET  OF  THE  GOOD  DEATH    495 

ing  to  a  mere  thread  of  a  whisper  at  the  end;  Burke  began 
some  words  meant  to  assure  her  that  he  wanted  nothing  so 
much  as  to  help  her  whenever  he  could,  but  she  went  on 
without,  apparently,  hearing  him:  "They  even  come  in  'n' 
told  me  you  was  dead  —  stood  me  down  you  was  dead,  when 
I  jest  knew  you  wasn't!  That  shows  how  much  they  know 
—  pore  critters!" 

"Haven't  you  had  any  doctor?" 

"Oh,  law,  yes.  A  doctor  V  a  priest,  too.  They're  jest 
th'  same  as  th'  rest,  they  ain't  got  any  sense,  any  of  'em. 
'F  I  could  git  out  o'  here,  I'd  git  well  a  heap  quicker.  Why, 
I  don't  feel  a  bit  bad.  It's  only  I'm  so  tired." 

"Well,  I'm  going  to  get  you  out  of  here,  quick  as  I  can, 
Nance,"  said  Burke,  cheerfully.  "It's  a  good  thing  you  sent 
for  me  —  best  thing  you  could  have  done." 

"Yes,  I  'lowed  you'd  take  me  away.  It'll  cost  somethin' 
of  course,  but  Pap'll  pay  ye.  People  most  injinerally  don't 
b'leeve  it,  but  Pap's  mighty  pertickler  'bout  owin'  anybody 
money  —  you  know  how  Pap  is,"  she  said  with  no  change 
of  expression,  and  in  a  manner  so  reasonable  as  to  render 
her  words  all  the  more  startling.  But  the  next  moment  she 
seemed  to  come  to  herself.  "Was  I  talkin'  'bout  Pap,  Na 
than?  Ain't  that  funny?  I  git  to  thinkin'  'bout  him,  'n' 
first  you  know,  I  fergit  he's  dead." 

Whether  it  was  the  change,  the  fresh  air  and  greater 
comforts  Burke  was  able  to  give  her,  or  whether  these  ex 
tremes  of  weakness  and  revival  are  familiar  features  of  her 
disease  —  our  doctors  themselves  seemed  to  be  of  divided 
opinion  —  Nance  did  actually  improve  a  little  during  the 
next  few  wreeks.  There  never  was  the  slightest  hope  for  her; 
but  even  this  brief  reprieve  and  respite  was  grateful,  and  the 
poor  thing  herself  talked  on  of  getting  well  and  going  home 
with  a  heart-rending  confidence.  Would  any  one,  would 
Burke,  her  only  friend,  have  had  her  recover?  I  do  not 
know.  In  her  moments  of  suffering,  the  young  man  found 
himself  with  horror  pausing  on  the  thought,  Lord  God  Al 
mighty,  let  her  live  or  let  her  die,  but  one  way  or  the  other, 
let  the  torment  be  ended,  for  flesh  and  blood  cannot  longer 
endure  this  spectacle!  And  I  will  say  this,  that  no  man  or 
woman  has  ever  seen  a  like  hopeless  decline  even  of  the  one 


496  NATHAN    BURKE 

nearest  and  dearest  without,  consciously  or  not,  the  same 
prayer. 

Burke  used  to  visit  her  every  day  or  so,  thereby  provid 
ing  additional  color  and  body,  I  dare  say,  to  those  reports 
which  George  Ducey  had  been  so  forward  to  circulate.  If 
Nance  ever  thought  of  that  passage  in  her  career,  she  did  not 
mention  it;  she  never  spoke  about  her  recent  life  at  all, 
except  the  months  of  her  illness;  it  all  seemed  to  have  slipped 
away  from  her  like  a  foul  garment.  What  would  going  home 
have  meant  to  her,  in  health?  Yet  she  dwelt  on  it,  or  at 
least  used  that  form  of  words  constantly,  without,  however, 
asking  after  anybody,  or  naming  any  place.  She  was  very 
much  like  other  invalids,  talking  to  Nat  when  he  sat  with 
her  about  her  appetite,  the  food,  the  doctor,  the  nurse,  her 
improvement  since  yesterday  —  what  would  you  have?  It 
is  only  in  works  of  fiction,  as  I  have  said,  that  the  death-bed 
is  poetical  or  dramatic;  and  I  think  now  that  poor  Nance's 
last  days  were  not  less  sad  for  being  so  commonplace.  Her 
mind  was  at  no  time  absolutely  clear,  being  liable  to  lapses 
such  as  we  have  seen;  but  towards  the  end  she  wandered  a 
great  deal  more,  calling  out  and  naming  people  who  were 
strange  to  Burke,  often  with  a  distressing  earnestness,  and 
talking  to  herself  with  feeble  gestures.  She  died  in  Novem 
ber,  the  week  before  we  started  for  home. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

ARMS   YIELD   TO   THE   TOGA 

AND  now  Johnny  was  to  go  marching  home,  with  his 
honors  and  his  scars,  with  his  limp  and  his  hanging  sleeve, 
with  the  goggle-eyed  stone  idol  he  dug  up  with  his  bayonet 
out  of  the  crumbling  side  of  Cholula  Pyramid,  with  the 
Mexican  cavalry  officer's  sash  and  sabre,  and  the  silver 
crucifix  he  bought  in  Thieves'  Market  down  by  the  Zocalo 
of  a  Sunday  morning.  "  Think  they'll  look  kinder  pretty 
fixed  up  over  th'  chimbly-piece  —  sort  of  a  mee-mento," 
says  Johnny  sentimentally,  not  yet  aware,  honest  lad,  that 
a  cruel  stab  of  pain  whenever  it  threatens  rain  will  supply 
him  with  a  much  more  forcible  mee-mento  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  He  thinks  —  with  what  longing!  —  of  the  cabin 
and  the  corn-patch,  the  cross-roads  schoolhouse,  the  swim 
ming-hole —  "It's  a  terrible  pity  'bout  Lem  Stiles!  Never 
think  of  goin'  in  swimmin'  'thout  jest  nachally  lookin'  fer  Lem 
to  be  there.  An'  my  lordy,  th'  times  we've  snaked  melons 
out'n  old  Pete  Baker's  patch!  Lem  he  got  shot,  y'  know, 
back  to  Cerro  Gordo,  last  spring  —  terrible  pity!"  he  sighs 
retrospectively  to  some  other  Johnny  who,  calling  up  his  own 
home-picture  of  prairie-land,  mountains,  sea-beaten  coast, 
or  palmetto-swamp,  and  some  Lem  Stiles  of  his  acquaintance, 
nods  in  sympathy.  Yes,  it's  a  pity,  but  war  is  wrar;  it  is  all 
over  now;  and  we  have  done  our  duty,  no  matter  if  the 
generals  do  wrangle  and  contradict,  and  the  newspapers 
find  fault;  we  have  played,  if  not  a  hero's  part,  at  least  a 
man's.  Let  us  go  home  and  kiss  Jennie  and  the  babies,  who 
won't  be  caring  a  penny  whether  we  are  heroes  or  not,  so 
we  are  safe  and  whole! 

There  was,  however,  one  man  who,  all  signs  to  the  con 
trary  notwithstanding,  was  firmly  convinced  that  the  con 
flict  was  not  yet  ended,  that  it  would  only  end  when  our 
government  should  have  acquired  undisputed  sway  through 
out  the  Republic  of  Mexico,  and  seen  the  wisdom  of  incor- 
2K  497 


498  NATHAN    BURKE 

porating  that  territory  with  the  United  States.  Burke's 
general  used  to  go  over  these  theses  by  the  hour  with  much 
coruscating  and  explosive  rhetoric,  and  a  terrific  amount  of 
letter- writing;  and,  in  order  to  further  these  mighty  events, 
the  first  step,  it  appeared,  was  to  apply  to  the  general-in- 
chief  for  the  command  of  a  full  division,  "in  consonance  with 
my  rank  as  major-general,"  said  Quitman,  formally  pointing 
out  that  he  had  waived  this  right  at  Puebla  "when  the 
exigencies  of  the  public  service  were  imperative."  General 
Scott  replied  simply  that  he  didn't  consider  himself  able  to 
make  any  such  arrangement;  whereupon  it  became  neces 
sary  for  Burke's  general  to  apply  in  person  to  the  secretary 
of  war  at  Washington.  "And  while  there,  Burke,  I  shall  not 
fail  to  callNMr.  Marcy's  attention  —  if  I  go  no  higher  than 
him—  '  Quitman  informed  his  aide  impressively-  "to 
the  inaccuracy  of  the  reports  describing  the  taking  of  Mexico 
City,  and  my  division's  part  in  the  actions.  It's  no  secret 
—  everybody  in  this  division,  everybody  in  the  whole  army, 
knows  it  —  we  have  not  received  our  due.  There  ought 
not  to  be  any  doubt  in  the  public  mind  —  the  American 
public,  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  United  States, 
should  know  that  we  were  foremost  in  the  attack  on  the 
fortress,  and  first  at  the  city  gates.  It's  only  our  just  due. 
Great  God,  is  a  man  like  you  to  be  passed  over  with  a  mere 
word,  '  Captain  —  now  Colonel  —  Burke  displayed  great 
coolness  and  daring!'  Is  that  all  they've  got  to  say?  They 
could  say  that  much  for  every  single  man,  every  last  private 
among  my  gallant  fellows.  No,  they  haven't  done  us 
justice.  And  as  to  my  recklessness  —  as  to  my  needlessly 
sacrificing  my  men  at  the  Belen  Garita  —  it's  a  monstrous 
falsehood.  The  lives  of  my  men  are  as  dear  to  me  as  my  own. 
I  never  received  one  order  from  General  Scott  to  advance 
by  the  other  road  —  never!  At  least,  none  that  I  can  re 
member.  He  never  sent  me  any  word  about  it  —  nothing 
that  I  could  possibly  regard  as  authoritative,  anyhow.  It's 
accusing  me  of  insubordination  —  /  insubordinate  and 
reckless!  They  little  know  John  Quitman.  No,  we've 
been  misrepresented,  Burke,  perhaps  not  intentionally  so> 
but  still  misrepresented.  At  best,  newspaper  reports  are 
seldom  strictly  true  —  I'm  not  reflecting  on  your  friend  Mr. 
Sharpless,  of  course,"  added  the  general  hastily,  afraid  that 


ARMS   YIELD   TO  THE  TOGA  499 

he  had  hurt  the  other's  feelings;  "he  is  one  of  a  few  who  are 
at  once  brilliant  and  absolutely  reliable.  A  talented  man, 
sir,  and  what  is  more  a  man  of  heart,  —  a  man  for  whom  I 
have  the  greatest  respect." 

General  Quitman  with  upwards  of  fifty  officers  from  his 
division,  most  of  whom  like  Burke  and  unlike  the  general 
himself  were  definitely  resigning  their  commissions,  left  the 
city  of  Mexico  about  the  middle  of  November,  receiving 
such  magnificent  formalities  of  farewell  as  delighted  the 
general's  soul  and  abjectly  dismayed  his  late  secretary,  who 
was  no  hand  at  all  at  speech-making,  and  never  knew  which 
way  to  look  while  the  compliments  were  passing.  The 
municipal  authorities  called  in  a  body  to  manifest  their 
respect  and  good-will;  the  commander-in-chief  dined  us 
elaborately.  Colonel  Burnett  of  the  New  York  regiment 
addressed  to  the  general  a  farewell  oration  that  brought 
tears  to  Quitman's  eyes;  the  feelings  he  expressed  —  said 
the  colonel  —  were  those  of  the  entire  division  towards  one 
who  was  to  them  at  once  general,  father,  and  friend  — "your 
fame  was  known  to  us  before  our  association  as  officers,  and 
its  lustre  has  brightened  as  the  sun  from  morn  to  noon.  .  .  . 
We  have  seen  you  at  Chapuitepec  as  cool  as  when  we  meet 
you  now  in  friendship.  .  .  .  Not  a  muscle  moved  in  that 
stern  and  manly  face  but  to  smile  when  the  colors  of  your 
division  and  our  beloved  country  were  thrown  to  the  free 
winds  above  the  conquered  castle!"  recited  Colonel  Burnett 
amid  prodigious  applause.  Indeed,  what  he  said  was  true, 
and  there  was  not  one  of  us  but  felt  a  great  love  and  admira 
tion  for  our  commander,  so  brave,  so  boyish,  so  high-souled. 
He  replied  with  a  great  deal  of  feeling  and  spirit,  referring 
regretfully  to  the  fact  that  he  was  now  about  to  separate 
from  those  gallant  officers  and  men  with  whom  he  had  been 
so  honorably  associated  —  "but  I  regard  it  as  the  soldier's 
part  to  seek  the  path  where  duty  calls  me!"  says  our  general 
in  a  thrilled  and  trembling  voice,  honestly  convinced  that 
duty  called  him  to  go  and  bedevil  the  authorities  into  giving 
him  a  commission  in  the  regular  army!  We  cheered  him  to 
the  echo;  and  then  somebody  got  up  —  it  was  Captain 
Hutton,  also  of  the  New  York  volunteers  —  and  "presented 
Colonel  Nathan  Burke  with  an  elegant  pair  of  silver  spurs, 
accompanying  the  gift  with  a  brief  but  extremely  apropos 


500  NATHAN    BURKE 

speech.  Colonel  Burke  made  an  appropriate  reply!" 
Heavens  and  earth,  I  can  see  Jimmie  now,  scrawling  the 
above  note  for  his  newspaper,  grinning  and  underscoring 
"brief  but  extremely  apropos!"  The  fact  is,  both  gentlemen 
were  embarrassed  almost  to  the  point  of  speechlessness,  and 
nothing  but  the  kind  applause  of  the  rest  relieved  the  situa 
tion. 

We  reached  New  Orleans  a  day  or  so  before  Thanksgiving, 
where  we  got,  literally,  a  roaring  reception,  salvos  of  cannon 
going  off  in  the  Place  d'Armes  and  Lafayette  Square  fit  to 
deafen  the  populace;  more  oratory  —  more  enthusiasm — • 
crowds  of  bewilderingly  pretty  women  —  the  American 
Theatre  jammed  to  the  roof  that  night,  and  everybody 
standing  up  when  our  general  entered  to  "See,  the  conquer 
ing  hero  comes!"  on  a  very  vigorous  brass  band.  All  of 
which  we  were  once  more  regretfully  obliged  to  part  from, 
as  we  took  boat  up  the  river  next  day,  amid  tremendous 
hurrahing  from  the  mob  assembled  on  the  levees.  Who 
wouldn't  be  Johnny  when  he  comes  marching  home?  There 
were  a  number  of  civilians  trailing  humbly  in  our  company, 
among  them  Mr.  James  Sharpless,  and  our  friend,  the  ex- 
lieutenant  of  Ohio  volunteers,  George  Ducey,  Esquire,  —  a 
bracketing  together  of  their  names  which  would  have  pleased 
neither  one.  "What  do  you  want  to  carry  him  around  on 
cotton  for,  Nat?"  growled  the  former;  "damn  it,  let  him 
herd  along  with  the  discharged  men  on  one  of  the  transports 
—  it  would  be  enough  too  good  for  the  fellow.  What  are 
you  going  to  do  with  him?  You  can't  have  him  around  — 
nobody'll  speak  to  him.  If  he  had  the  spirit  of  a  louse  he'd 
keep  out  of  it  himself.  You  take  as  much  care  of  him  as 
if  he  were  actually  worth  something  — 

"He  is,  to  his  mother,"  said  Burke.  % 

"Why,  of  course,  but  let  his  mother  look  out  for  him,  then. 
You're  not  responsible  for  George  Dueey  —  it's  quixotic. 
He's  stolen  from  you  and  lied  about  you,  and  he'll  keep  on 
stealing  from  you  and  lying  about  you.  Does  that  fellow  know 
what  gratitude  or  justice  or  humanity  means?  He's  never 
done  a  thing  in  his  life  that  won't  be  remembered  to  his  ever 
lasting  discredit.  When  you  get  home,  you're  going  to  find 
out  what  you  have  to  thank  George  for,"  cried  out  Jim, 
excitedly. 


ARMS   YIELD   TO   THE   TOGA  501 

"What  difference  does  all  that  make?"  asked  the  other. 
"I  know  as  well  as  you  what  George  is.  Do  you  suppose 
I'm  looking  after  him  because  I'm  in  hopes  he'll  turn  over 
a  new  leaf  —  reform  and  become  a  worthy  member  of  so 
ciety?  He'd  never  do  that  in  a  thousand  years.  I'm  not 
doing  it  for  George's  sake  —  I'm  doing  it  for  my  own. 
Would  you  have  had  me  let  him  hang?  Or,  after  we  got 
him  off  from  that,  should  I  have  let  him  starve?" 

"You  might  let  him  work  now,  anyhow,"  said  Sharpless 
with  a  half-laugh ;  "that  would  be  at  least  a  novelty."  Yet 
he  perhaps  felt  himself  answered,  and  offered  no  more  objec 
tions.  He  looked  at  his  friend  affectionately,  whimsically. 
"Oh,  go  your  way,  Nat  Burke.  To  the  end  of  your  days 
you  will  be  shouldering  somebody's  burdens,  and  somebody 
will  be  imposing  on  you."  So  this  fiery  discussion  con 
cluded,  the  two  friends  smoking  in  perfect  amity  with  their 
heels  cocked  up  on  the  guards  of  the  Mississippi  steamboat. 

Oh,  those  old  Mississippi  river  boats!  I  swear  when  I 
remember  them,  the  fleets  of  Solomon,  the  galleys  of  Cleo 
patra,  the  state  barge  of  Venice  —  all  the  glorious  argosies 
of  history  pale  and  dwindle.  We  voyaged,  surrounded  by 
mirrors,  gilding,  veneering,  plush,  and  panels;  we  ate  and 
drank  whatever  was  best  or  richest  in  the  country;  the 
captain  was  an  elegant  creature  in  a  dress-coat  who,  when 
the  hour  arrived,  came  and  took  the  oldest  or  most  impor 
tant  of  the  ladies  by  the  hand,  and  led  her  to  the  dinner- 
table  and  placed  her  there  with  French  graces.  A  horde  of 
negro  boys  in  white  jackets  waited  on  us;  it  took  half  a 
dozen  of  them  to  do  one  man's  work,  but  what  of  that? 
They  were  the  most  idle,  good-natured,  untrustworthy, 
amiable  rascals  on  earth,  and  they  brought  us  the  most 
Olympian  mint-juleps  that  ever  mortal  tasted,  and  blacked 
our  boots  to  the  utter  perfection.  In  the  evenings  the  piano 
went  gayly  in  the  grand  saloon;  white  organdies  and  laces 
spread  like  drifts  of  snow  on  the  guards;  poker  and  seven-up 
flourished  on  the  lower  decks.  Who  could  have  counted  the 
pretty  girls,  darky  roustabouts,  bowie-knives,  duelling 
pistols,  packs  of  cards,  and  flasks  of  Bourbon  on  one  boat 
ascending  or  descending  that  murky  tide?  They  were  as 
the  sands  of  the  seashore  in  number.  Sometimes  one  had 
as  much  as  three  weeks  of  these  unalloyed  delights  on  the 


502  NATHAN    BURKE 

way  up-stream  from  New  Orleans  to  Cincinnati.  Talk  of 
your  Rhine  or  your  Nile  after  that,  if  you  have  the  face! 
I  have  seen  the  Lorelei,  and  I  may  yet  see  the  Pyramids,  but 
I  am  sure  neither  one  of  them  could  give  me  such  a  thrill 
as  overtaking  the  General  Jackson,  full  steam  up,  and  rumbling 
like  a  volcano,  everybody  crowding  to  the  rails,  cursing, 
screaming,  betting,  and  passing  her  victoriously — "just 
as  if  she  were  standing  still,  begad,  sir!"  Not  infrequently 
the  winner's  boiler  "let  go,"  in  the  classic  phrase,  shortly 
after  one  of  these  trials  of  speed,  and  Bludsoe's  ghost  went  up 
alone  in  the  smoke  of  the  Prairie  Belle.  There  was  always 
the  chance.  Can  you  match  that  on  the  Rhine? 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  with  such  a  diversity  of  company 
and  entertainment  even  George  Ducey  might  find  his  level ; 
and  he  did,  somewhere  or  somehow,  being  entirely  ignored 
by  Quitman,  his  staff,  and  the  other  army  men  who  happened 
to  be  passengers  on  our  boat.  Burke,  having  seen  that 
George  was  comfortable,  conceived  that  he  himself  had  done 
all  that  duty  required,  and  left  the  young  man  more  or  less 
to  his  own  devices.  I  think  the  latter  was  quite  satisfied 
with  the  arrangement;  he  heartily  disliked  his  protector, 
as  was  natural.  I  don't  know  how  he  passed  his  time,  but 
very  likely  he  made  more  friends  than  Burke  himself,  who 
was  too  much  occupied  with  thoughts  of  home.  He  had 
heard  from  Mary  at  last;  the  letter  came  just  before  we  left 
the  City,  a  flatteringly  affectionate  letter  full  of  proud  talk 
about  her  "hero."  Nat  used  to  get  it  out  and  read  it  over 
and  ponder  its  pretty  sentences  in  alternate  fits  of  hope  and 
confidence,  and  of  deadly  misgivings.  He  raged  at  his  own 
distrust,  he  despised  his  jealousy,  yet  could  not  banish  it. 
He  would  have  given  worlds  to  open  his  heart  to  Jim  —  but 
how  could  he?  Noblesse  oblige!  and  deep  within  him,  Burke 
knew  that  even  if  they  could  bring  themselves  to  talk  about 
her,  the  brother  would  evade  his  questions.  "Nobody  is 
ever  frank  with  you  about  a  thing  like  that.  They  only  tell 
you  what  they  see  you  want  to  hear,"  said  Nat  to  himself, 
rather  bitterly.  I  dare  say  Colonel  Burke  was  a  dull,  grumpy 
companion  these  days,  for  all  his  military  titles  and  distinc 
tions;  indeed,  army  celebrities  were  a  drug  in  the  market  with 
us,  and  any  brisk  youth  with  a  turn  for  cards  and  throwing 
dice  was  much  more  popular.  As  Nathan  was  lounging  one 


ARMS   YIELD   TO   THE   TOGA  503 

afternoon  on  the  guards  with  his  chair  tilted  back,  while  he 
surveyed  the  low,  hot,  melancholy  landscape  sliding  by  (a 
sort  of  gloomy  pastime  which  he  rather  affected  at  this  time), 
two  men  sauntered  up,  took  a  turn  along  the  decks  in  front 
of  him,  and  finally  came  to  a  halt  against  the  rail  a  few  feet 
away.  Nat  looked  up  absently,  but  neither  noticed  him; 
they  went  on  talking  without  lowering  their  voices.  "Yep, 
you  want  to  look  out,  son,"  said  the  elder,  who  had  gray  hair 
and  looked  like  a  planter  in  a  small  way,  well-to-do,  but  not 
rich;  he  addressed  the  other  in  good-natured  warning. 
"Take  my  advice,  and  don't  get  mixed  up  in  any  card  game 
on  these  boats.  They're  chock-full  of  sharks  and  swindlers, 
and  they'll  do  you  every  time.  I  don't  want  to  run  you,  you 
understand;  I'm  just  telling  you  because  you  look  to  me  like 
a  young  fellow  that  ain't  had  much  experience,  huh  — ?" 

"Oh,  I  dunno.  I've  been  around  some,"  said  the  other, 
apparently  a  little  nettled  at  this  patronage;  he  was  a  very 
young  man.  "This  is  my  second  trip.  First  time  was  with 
Dad,  though.  I  guess  I've  got  my  eye-teeth  cut,  or  the  old 
man  wouldn't  have  let  me  go  off  by  myself.  I'm  going  to 
buy  hogs  —  got  to  go  up  to  Kentucky.  I  reckon  I'll  get  off 
at  Paducah." 

"Yes,  I  know.  You  hadn't  ought  to  go  showing  your 
money  around  like  I  saw  you  last  night,  either,"  said  the 
other,  shaking  his  head  reprovingly;  "you'll  get  in  trouble 
first  thing  you  know.  These  card  gamblers,  minute  they 
see  a  man  has  a  little  money,  they  lay  for  him  —  ain't  that 
so,  Mister?"  he  appealed  to  Nathan  confidently. 

"Shouldn't  wonder.  I've  been  told  so,"  assented  Burke, 
amiably. 

"There,  you  see,"  said  the  mentor,  turning  to  his  young 
friend  triumphantly;  "this  gentleman  says  so,  too,  and  he 
looks  to  be  a  man  that  would  know.  Can't  fool  you  much, 
I  guess,"  said  he  to  Burke,  knowingly.  "Why,  what  d'ye 
think?  Yesterday  there  was  a  fellow  come  up  to  me  in  the 
bar,  and  we  got  to  talking  like  a  person  does,  you  know,  and 
presently  he  says :  '  Say,  I  bet  I  know  a  card  trick  you  can't 
beat.'  'All  right/  says  I,  'less  see  it.'  Well,  he  got  out 
his  cards,  but  he  only  took  three,  and  —  say,  you  got  a  deck, 
Major?  I  could  show  you  the  trick  a  heap  quicker 'n  I 
can  explain  it." 


504  NATHAN    BURKE 

" Don't  believe  I  have  —  not  in  these  clothes,  anyhow," 
said  Nathan. 

"  Pshaw,  is  that  so?  Here,  wait  a  minute,  I  got  some  cards 
in  my  stateroom  — 

"Hold  on,"  interrupted  the  younger  man;  "I've  got  a 
deck,"  and  he  brought  out  an  exceedingly  dirty  and  greasy 
collection,  and  moved  up  a  chair.  "  Don't  know  that  the 
whole  fifty-two  are  here,  but  you  said  you  only  wanted 
three,  didn't  you?"  he  inquired  with  a  charming  ingenu 
ousness. 

"Three's  enough.  Gimme  the  Queen  of  Spades  for  one, 
will  you?  I  reckon  I'll  be  kind  of  awkward  at  it,  but  I  can 
show  you  something  the  way  he  did  it.  He  took  and  threw 
the  cards  around,  backs  up,  kind  of  careless  like,  y'know,  and 
then  says  to  me:  'Now  you  pick  the  baby,'  and  I  - 

"The  baby's  the  Queen  of  Spades?"  inquired  Nat,  begin 
ning  to  show  an  innocent  interest. 

"Yes.  Just  like  this,  y'know,  he  threw  'em  around. 
There,  I  did  it  better  that  time.  Can  you  pick  her?" 

"Huh,  that's  easy  enough!"  said  the  boy,  with  contempt. 
"I  saw  her  plain  when  you  flipped  her  down.  It's  the 
middle  one."  He  stretched  out  his  hand  and  turned  over 
the  card  which  proved  to  be  "the  baby"  sure  enough. 

"You  got  me  that  time,"  said  the  other,  and  laughed. 
"The  way  the  fellow  did  it  'twasn't  so  easy,  though.  Bet 
you  can't  pick  her  now." 

"Bet  you  fifty  cents  I  can!" 

"Aw,  fifty  cents!" 

"Well,  bet  you  five  dollars  then!"  said  the  boy,  defiantly, 
and  got  the  money  out  and  flung  it  down  on  the  seat  of  the 
chair.  "It's  the  card  over  farthest  to  the  left  —  my  left, 
I  mean." 

"All  right,  I'll  just  take  that  bet,"  said  the  instructor. 
"Which  do  you  say  it  is,  Cap?  D'ye  agree  with  him?" 

Nathan  brought  the  front  legs  of  his  chair  down  hard; 
he  studied  the  cards  with  a  knotted  brow;  he  considered 
deeply,  rubbing  his  chin,  while  the  others  eyed  him.  At 
last,  "I  give  it  up!"  he  announced  with  a  mild  sigh. 

The  left-hand  one,  on  being  exposed,  was  the  Queen  of 
Spades  again.  "Pretty  easy  money!"  said  the  younger 
man,  gathering  in  his  winnings  with  a  triumphant  chuckle. 
"You'd  ought  to  have  bet  my  way,  Mister." 


ARMS   YIELD   TO   THE   TOGA  505 

"You  can't  do  it  three  times  hand-running,"  retorted  the 
planter. 

"  Can't,  hey?  I'd  like  to  know  why  not.  It's  as  easy  as 
easy.  All  you  got  to  do  is  keep  your  eye  peeled." 

And,  amazing  to  relate,  he  did  win  a  third  time  —  and 
then  lost  —  and  then  won  again  twice,  at  gradually  increas 
ing  stakes,  while  Burke  looked  on  admiringly.  "You've 
got  pretty  good  luck  guessing,"  he  remarked. 

"Take  a  try  yourself,  Colonel,"  said  the  youth.  '  'Tain't 
much  of  a  card  trick,  far  as  I  can  see.  Take  a  try." 

"I've  got  a  kind  of  superstition  about  cards,"  said  Burke, 
sadly;  "never  hold  any  hands,  or  have  any  luck." 

"I  ain't  having  much  myself  with  these  cards,"  said  the 
planter,  rising  —  and  was  it  fancy,  or  did  the  two  exchange 
a  fleeting  glance?     "They're  too  durned  old  and  sticky - 
I  can't  handle  'em.     Wait  till  I  get  that  pack  out  of  my 
cabin." 

As  he  went  off,  the  boy  leaned  forward,  with  his  face 
close  to  Burke's  and  whispered:  "Say,  Mister,  on  the  dead 
level,  'tain't  luck.  I've  got  the  baby  card  marked  with  a 
little  picked-up  place  in  the  middle  of  the  back  —  you  can 
see  it  easy  if  you  squint  a  little  sideways  so  the  light  strikes  it. 
I  done  it  with  a  pin  under  my  nail  when  he  wasn't  looking. 
Say,  you  bet  on  it  every  time,  and  we'll  clean  him  out.  Or 
just  once  —  for  fun,  y'know  —  just  bet  him  once,  hey?" 

"Oh,  I  guess  I  don't  want  to  take  advantage  of  an  honest 
old  fellow  like  him,"  said  the  colonel,  grinning. 

The  other  drew  back,  scrutinizing  Burke  narrowly.  He 
hesitated,  then  burst  into  a  short  laugh,  got  up,  thrusting 
the  cards  into  his  pocket,  and  walked  off.  He  was  a  big, 
powerfully  built  young  fellow,  not  more  than  nineteen  or 
twenty  years  old,  with  hardly  a  line  in  his  heavy,  sallow 
face  —  a  promising  rogue.  Burke  saw  him  joined  by  the 
other  scoundrel  a  little  farther  along,  and  they  strolled  off 
together  in  search  of  easier  victims,  probably.  On  inquiry 
Nat  discovered  that  the  gray-headed  man  went  by  the  name 
of  "Canada  Charlie"  and  was  a  well-known  character  on 
the  river.  "They  say  he's  been  known  to  clean  up  ten  or 
fifteen  thousand  dollars  on  one  trip,"  said  Sharpless,  who, 
on  hearing  of  this  adventure,  immediately  busied  himself  to 
collect  further  information.  Jim  was  always  at  heart  much 
more  the  journalist  than  the  man  of  letters;  men  and  women, 


506  NATHAN   BURKE 

good  and  bad,  high  and  low  —  everything  interested  him. 
He  loved  his  trade  of  telling  one-half  the  world  how  the  other 
half  lives,  and  brought  to  the  practice  of  it,  humor,  sym 
pathy,  understanding,  a  great  knack  of  enlisting  confidence. 
He  even  had  some  little  talk  with  Canada  Charlie  himself. 
"I  spoke  about  his  experience  with  you,  Nat,  and  the  old 
rascal  grinned,  but  all  he  would  say  was:  'Yep,  you  can't 
skin  an  honest  man  —  I've  noticed  it  often.'" 

"That  was  a  pretty  open  speech  for  such  a  man  to  make," 
said  Burke,  surprised.  "I  can't  see  anything  particularly 
honest  about  it,  anyhow.  It's  just  that  this  something-for- 
nothing-and-beat-the-other-fellow  business  always  has  struck 
me  as  all  damn  nonsense.  You  can't  get  anything  without 
paying  for  it,  and  you  don't  want  to  when  all's  said  —  you'd 
rather  pay." 

"Mr.  Canada  Charlie's  profession  is  evidently  based  on 
the  opposite  theory,  and  I  suppose  his  experience  points  that 
way,  too."  said  Jim.  " Naturally  he  wasn't  very  expansive 
about  himself.  I  asked  him  if  he  generally  travelled  with  a 
friend.  He  said  sometimes,  not  always;  he  intimated  that 
a  partnership  was  convenient,  but  had  its  drawbacks  —  like 
dividing  up  the  haul,  I  dare  say,  though  he  wasn't  explicit. 
He  picked  the  young  man  up  in  New  Orleans,  and  says  he's 
a  smart  boy.  Hope  they  won't  get  hold  of  George,  Nathan." 

"Oh,  George  is  safe  —  he  hasn't  got  any  money,"  said 
Burke  with  a  laugh. 

Quitman's  home  was  in  Natchez,  Mississippi,  and  on  our 
arrival  there,  the  general  "was  received  with  every  demon 
stration  of  honor.  He  was  saluted  with  cannon  captured  at 
Alvarado,  and  afterwards  escorted  into  the  city  by  a  civic 
and  military  procession,  and  WM.  T.  MARTIN,  ESQ.,  in  a 
strain  of  impassioned  oratory,  welcomed  the  hero  home. ..." 
All  of  which  you  may  find  in  the  issue  of  the  Natchez  Sentinel 
for  the  following  day,  and  I  can  personally  testify  to  the 
accuracy  of  the  account.  The  "cannon  captured  at  Alva 
rado"  were  going  at  intervals  all  day  with  a  stunning  uproar 
-  which,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  at  this  "capture"  nobody 
on  either  side  had  fired  a  single  shot,  seemed  to  Burke  a 
little  inappropriate.  The  streets  were  packed,  the  applause 
deafening.  A  parade  led  by  a  brass  band,  a  delegation  from 


ARMS   YIELD   TO  THE  TOGA  507 

the  Masonic  fraternity,  another  of  survivors  from  the  battle 
of  New  Orleans,  another  of  invited  celebrities,  the  bench  and 
bar  of  the  city  in  a  body,  the  mayor  and  council  and  all  the 
prominent  citizens,  marched  out  to  General  Quitman's  beau 
tiful  home  a  mile  or  so  from  town,  and  welcomed  us  in  state. 
WM.  T.  MARTIN,  ESQ.,  — who  was  a  long,  lank  young  man 
with  a  richly  rolling  voice,  fiery  black  eyes,  and  a  great 
mane  of  black,  shining  hair  which  he  tossed  back  and  shook 
back  and  combed  back  from  his  face  with  dramatic  move 
ments, —  WM.  T.,  I  say,  fairly  submerged  us  with  his  impas 
sioned  oratory.  "How  wonderful!"  says  he  —  putting  his 
hair  back  with  one  dash  of  his  left  hand,  while  he  thrust  the 
right  into  the  breast  of  his  black  frock-coat  —  "how  won 
derful  is  it  that  this  very  city,  bearing  the  name  of  a  noble 
fragment  of  the  Aztec  race,  who,  driven  from  Mexico  by 
the  sword  of  the  Montezumas  or  of  Cortez,  found  shelter 
on  this  bluff,  where  their  proud  name  is  still  preserved  — • 
how  wonderful  is  it  that  from  their  ashes  should  have  ap 
peared  an  avenger  of  their  wrongs,  and  that  our  Quitman 
(frantic  applause)  from  fair  Natchez  (more  applause)  was 
the  instrument  in  the  hands  of  Providence  to  '  spoil  the 
spoiler. ";  He  might  well  call  it  wonderful;  to  him  alone 
belongs  the  glory  of  discovering  this  important  historical 
fact,  and  we  all  listened  in  respectful  astonishment.  "  I 
do  not  attempt  to  quote  his  burning  language,"  said  the 
Sentinel  next  day;  nor  shall  I.  Burke's  general  rejoined  in 
a  manner  that  became  him  well,  giving  and  taking  credit 
where  it  was  due,  and  thanking  everybody  in  a  very  manly 
style,  if  it  might  have  been  more  simple.  "I  will  not  re 
peat  what,  no  doubt,  ere  this,  you  have  been  wearied  of 
reading  —  '  he  said  —  and  then,  like  many  another  orator, 
before  and  since,  went  to  work  and  repeated  it! 

"Shall  I  tell  you  how  this  devoted  band  of  less  than  half 
a  score  thousand  men,  penetrated  into  the  Mexican  Valley 
through  a  line  of  all  but  impregnable  batteries,  thrice  and 
again  defeated  an  enemy  of  four  times  their  numbers,  took 
guns  by  the  hundred  and  prisoners  by  the  thousand  (applause) , 
and  raised  the  starry  banner  of  Columbia  (cheers)  over  that 
citadel  where,  since  the  entry  of  the  Spaniard,  no  alien  flag 
had  ever  waved?  No,  my  friends,  I  shall  not  dwell  upon 
these  deeds,  but  one  egotism  I  shall  commit  —  I  was  amongst 


508  NATHAN   BURKE 

the  foremost  to  cross  the  barricades  of  the  city,  after  a  de 
termined  resistance,  and  it  was  my  happy  fate  that,  at  my 
personal  command,  the  Stars  and  Stripes  were  first  flung  to 
the  wind  of  Mexico  above  the  palace  (tremendous  applause) . 
And  now  when  shall  we  gather  the  fruits  of  our  conquest? 
I  speak  out  boldly  as  I  spoke  when  the  Texas  question  came 
up.  I  say,  KEEP  this  country  (wild  applause) !  It  is  its  fate. 
It  is  our  fate.  We  cannot  shirk  this  responsibility!" 

And,  after  a  good  deal  more  in  the  same  heroic  vein,  amid 
frequent  outbursts  of  hurrahing,  the  general  at  last  sat 
down.  I  think  he  had  one  eye  on  the  presidency  at  this 
time  —  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  name  a  general  in  our 
army  who  did  not  once  in  a  while  look  in  that  direction; 
but,  if  ever  there  was  an  honest  man,  it  was  Quitman,  and 
if  he  was  talking  for  effect,  it  is  my  solemn  belief  he  didn't 
know  it. 

In  the  evening  we  had  a  banquet  where  all  the  notables 
in  the  place,  that  is,  about  three-fifths  of  the  whole  male 
population  —  the  rest  were  colored  —  sat  down,  and  there 
was  a  great  deal  of  good  eating  and  ditto  drinking.  Toasts 
were  called  —  by  WM.  T.  MARTIN  —  and  responded  to, 
and  there  were  interludes  of  music.  The  Sentinel  has  it  all: 
"'The  President  of  the  United  States.'  Music:  Hail 

Columbia. 
"'General  John  A.  Quitman,  "Second  to  None!'"  Music: 

Hail  to  the  Chief. 

"'The  Memory  of  Washington.'     Music:   The  Dead  March 
in  Saul." 

And  so  on,  through  General  Taylor  and  General  Scott, 
the  Army,  the  Navy,  the  Heroes  of  the  Revolution  —  never 
since  have  I  sat  through  so  exhaustive  a  list.  We  actually 
even  sifted  down  to  The  Hardy  Sons  of  Ohio  and  Colonel 
Nathan  Burke  (Music :  Pop  goes  the  Weasel) !  Alas,  when  he 
arose,  the  unfortunate  colonel  •  could  not  get  out  a  word, 
and  but  for  the  presence  of  mind  of  WM.  T.  MARTIN,  ESQ., 
nobody  knows  what  might  have  happened.  For  that  gentle 
man,  taking  pity  on  him  after  a  few  moments  of  Burke's 
stammering  and  stuttering,  rose  up,  and  remarking  gracefully 
that  the  situation  and  the  honorable  confusion  of  the  chief 
actor  reminded  him  strongly  of  an  incident  in  the  life  of  the 


ARMS   YIELD   TO   THE   TOGA  509 

great  Father  of  his  Country  (prolonged  applause)  when  under 
very  similar  circumstances  he  received  the  thanks  of  the 
Virginia  Assembly,  added:  "Sir,  I  will  say  to  you  in  the 
words  of  the  Speaker  on  that  occasion :  l  Sit  down,  Colonel, 
sit  down!  Your  modesty  is  equal  to  your  valor,  and  I  can 
say  nothing  in  higher  praise  of  either!"  Whereupon,  to 
an  accompaniment  of  cheers,  Colonel  Burke  did  most  gladly 
and  thankfully  sit  down,  and  I  have  no  doubt  everybody 
else  was  as  much  relieved  as  himself. 

But  now,  the  Press  of  America  being  toasted,  up  got 
Mr.  James  Sharpless,  —  Major  Sharpless,  as  he  appeared  in 
the  papers  next  day, — put  his  thick  black  hair  back  from 
his  brow  with  one  hand,  stuck  the  other  into  the  front  of  his 
frock-coat,  and  began.  He  said  —  but  what  didn't  he  say? 
He  quoted  history,  he  quoted  poetry,  he  quoted  the  Bible 
and  Shakespeare  —  the  eagle  screamed  and  soared,  the 
starry  banner  waved,  the  cannon  thundered  throughout  his 
speech.  WM.  T.  MARTIN  was  nowhere  beside  him,  a  mere 
squib  in  the  glare  of  Jim's  rockets  and  red  fire.  The  chiv 
alry  of  the  South,  the  principles  of  Democracy,  the  glorious 
institutions  of  Freedom  —  I  don't  think  he  neglected  one  of  the 
well-worn  topics  or  phrases.  And  such  was  the  enthusiasm 
he  aroused,  that  when,  after  winding  up  with  a  fervid 
eulogium  of  Mississippi,  Natchez,  and  the  present  meeting, 
-  where,  he  said,  he  had  heard  such  oratory  as  it  had  never 
been  his  fortune  to  hear  before,  —  he  resumed  his  seat,  he 
had  to  get  up  twice  in  response  to  the  applause;  and  sat  down 
again,  with  an  almost  imperceptible  wink  at  Burke  as  he 
emptied  his  glass  of  whiskey  and  water. 

General  Quitman  and  some  others  of  the  older  company 
left,  I  think,  shortly  after  this.  But,  to  tell  the  truth, 
neither  Colonel  Burke  nor  Mr.  Sharpless,  nor  —  I  have  a 
strong  suspicion  — most  of  the  rest  of  us,  ever  had  but  a  very 
hazy  idea  of  the  subsequent  proceedings.  And,  waking  up 
late  with  a  raging  headache  the  next  morning,  the  colonel 
found  himself  the  owner  of  a  coat  several  sizes  too  small  for 
him,  and  a  brand-new  gold-headed  cane  the  like  of  which  he 
was  not  in  the  habit  of  carrying;  and  received,  in  the  course 
of  the  day,  two  invitations  to  dine,  and  twenty-five  dollars 
in  payment  of  a  bet  from  gentlemen  whom  he  did  not  remem 
ber  ever  to  have  seen  or  heard  of  before  in  his  whole  life! 


CHAPTER  XIV 
IN  WHICH  COLONEL  BURKE  GETS  HIS  DISCHARGE 

BURKE  parted  from  his  late  commander  at  Natchez  with 
a  regret  which  I  believe  the  general  shared.  He  was  quite 
sure  of  his  brevet  from  Washington,  sanguine,  visionary,  and 
enthusiastic  as  a  boy,  full  of  plans  for  the  new  conquest  of 
Mexico  in  which  he  was  very  anxious  for  his  ex-aide  to  take 
part.  ''Raise  a  regiment,  Burke,  you  could  easily  raise  a 
regiment,  a  man  of  your  prominence  at  home  in  your  own 
State,  and  abroad  —  hundreds  would  flock  to  your  standard ! 
I  have  no  doubt,  for  that  matter  —  although  this  is,  I  need 
hardly  tell  you,  in  the  strictest  confidence  —  I  have  no 
doubt  that,  by  bringing  a  little  judicious  pressure  to  bear 
upon  the  right  parties  —  "  Quitman  explained  with  a  fearfully 
diplomatic  look  —  "  by  the  aid  of  a  little  influence,  you  could 
get  a  brigade.  We  shall  need,  on  a  careful  calculation,  fifty 
thousand  men,  with  which  we  ought  to  overrun  the  whole 
country,  garrison  every  State  capital,  and  take  every  con 
siderable  city.  ..."  Burke  had  to  decline  this  opportunity 
to  the  other's  real  —  if  only  momentary  —  disappointment. 
But  they  shook  hands  heartily  and  said  their  good-bys  with 
not  a  little  feeling  on  both  sides;  and  the  next  Nat  heard, 
the  general  had  given  up  all  idea  of  war  and  conquest,  beaten 
his  sword  into  a  ploughshare,  and  settled  down  to  the  pursuit 
of  law,  and  —  intermittently  —  politics  in  "fair  Natchez" 
where  he  never  ceased  to  be  popular  and  beloved.  He  had 
a  stormy  time  of  it  afterwards  —  for  those  were  stormy  days 
—  as  governor  of  the  State,  and  member  of  Congress;  Burke 
used  to  read  his  speeches,  his  protests,  his  "open  letters" 
in  the  papers,  and  smile  over  their  characteristic  ardor, 
and  the  well-remembered  periods.  The  last  time  I  saw  him 
was  in  Washington  about  a  year  before  the  War,  when  he 
looked  badly  and  talked  in  a  rather  bitter  and  gloomy  strain 
about  the  ingratitude  of  republics  —  never  having  got  any 

510 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     511 

nearer  the  highest  awards  than  an  unsuccessful  candidacy 
for  the  vice-presidential  nomination!  But  he  brightened 
presently,  and  spoke  with  all  his  old  warmth  of  a  meeting  of 
the  veterans  of  his  old  Palmetto  Regiment  ("my  gallant 
South  Carolinians")  which  he  had  been  invited  to  visit 
and  address;  he  was  even  then  a  very  sick  man  and  died 
only  a  few  months  later. 

Our  young  men  now  continued  their  northward  journey, 
missing  the  late  stir  and  companionship,  yet  maybe  not 
entirely  sorry  to  have  a  little  less  notice  and  more  quiet. 
Gradually  the  officers  and  semi-military  followers  of  the  army 
with  whom  they  had  been  travelling  all  this  time,  reached 
their  homes,  disappeared  from  the  boat  and  were  replaced 
by  other  passengers.  The  curiosity  to  look  upon  war  heroes 
waned;  other  news  than  that  from  Mexico  began  to  occupy 
the  newspapers  and  fill  men's  mouths.  There  were  rumors 
that  gold  had  been  discovered  in  California;  emigration  to 
Oregon,  buffaloes,  Indians,  the  Great  American  Desert  — 
our  campaigns  were  already  stale  beside  these  topics.  At 
one  small  town  on  the  levee  we  saw  a  Mormon  encampment, 
tents,  live  stock,  and  covered  wagons  drawn  together  in  a 
surly  isolation,  bound  for  that  well-nigh  illimitable  West; 
we  saw  them  and  remarked  with  irreverent  wonder  on  the 
extremely  bad  taste  in  female  looks  manifested  by  the  fol 
lowers  of  the  prophet.  And,  among  the  adventures  of  this 
not  at  all  adventurous  trip,  Colonel  Burke  will  always  recall 
having  fallen  in  with  a  voluble,  confiding  youth,  by  name 
Decatur  P.  Gage,  a  clerk  in  the  office  of  Messrs.  Fielding  &. 
Hall,  Attorneys  of  St.  Louis,  whither  he  was  returning  after 
having  been  sent  out  to  collect  information  about  a  case 
coming  up  for  a  new  hearing  on  appeal  before  the  Circuit 
Court  next  spring.  This  was  Mr.  Gage's  first  important 
work  for  the  firm ;  and,  finding  out  that  Burke  was  a  lawyer, 
he  forthwith  entertained  the  colonel  with  an  extraordinarily 
long-winded  account  in  minute  detail  of  the  whole  thing: 
all  about  a  negro  who  had  been  brought  by  his  master  from 
Virginia  into  the  free  territory  of  Missouri  fifteen  years 
before,  and  had  been  married  and  had  children,  and  been 
left  as  a  legacy  wife,  children,  and  all,  and  about  whom  it 
appeared  there  was  now  a  grave  dispute.  "The  nigger's 
worthless,"  said  young  Gage,  in  response  to  a  question;  "but 


512  NATHAN   BURKE 

that  isn't  the  point,  you  know.  Point  is,  is  he  free?  If  we 
get  a  judgment  on  the  ground  of  technical  false  imprison 
ment  ever  since  he's  been  in  the  free  State  —  under  the  Com 
promise  that  ought  to  emancipate  him,  you  know  —  why, 
then  we  —  I  mean,  he  could  bring  suit  against  the  estate  for 
his  wages  all  that  while.  There'd  be  something  in  it,  you 
see,  or  old  man  Fielding  wouldn't  have  taken  it  up.  I  —  I 
mean,  you  know,"  he  added  in  dire  confusion;  "I  mean 
Scott's  got  a  case,  or  our  people  wouldn't  have  acted  for  him. 
That's  the  nigger's  name  —  Dred  Scott." 

This  young  gentleman  left  us  at  St.  Louis,  where  we  arrived 
at  such  an  outrageously  early  hour,  that  Burke,  who  allowed 
himself  some  indulgences  after  his  recent  hardships  on  the 
march,  was  still  in  bed;  and  he  was  snoring  soundly  when 
Sharpless,  who  was  always  a  much  earlier  bird,  owing  perhaps 
to  the  distressingly  irregular  habits  of  his  profession,  and 
who  had  got  up  in  the  express  purpose  of  seeing  the  place, 
came  knocking  at  the  stateroom  door.  " Burke!  Nathan! 
Hi,  there!  I  say,  wake  up!"  cried  Jim,  and  kept  up  a  pro 
digious  shouting. 

"Hungh?  Ungh?  What's  the  matter?"  says  the  gallant 
officer,  drowsily;  and  he  lumbered  out  of  bed,  and  unlocked 
the  door,  still  half  asleep. 

"  Where's  your  watch  and  money?  Are  you  sure  you've 
got  'em?"  said  Jim,  grinning  inexplicably  after  this  insane 
question. 

"Hungh?  Why,  of  course.  There  they  are  in  my  waist 
coat  under  the  pillow.  What's  up?  Boat  on  fire?" 

"  No,  oh,  no  —  we're  tied  up  safe  and  sound  at  the  landing. 
It's  St.  Louis,  you  know.  And,  Nathan,"  said  Sharpless, 
solemnly,  sitting  down  on  the  foot  of  the  bed  in  a  very 
deliberate  and  impressive  manner,  "Nathan,  some  of  us 
have  gone  ashore  already.  I  saw  'em  scurrying  down  the 
gang-plank  with  their  carpet-bags.  They  made  for  the 
shore,  magno  telluris  amore  !  —  and  got  into  waiting  chariots 
—  hacks  in  the  vulgar  tongue  —  and  were  whirled  from  my 
vision!  Who  knows  where  they've  gone,  or  what  has  be 
come  of  them?"" 

"Well,  what  of  it?  What  under  the  sun  are  you  talking 
about?"  said  Burke  in  bewilderment.  "  We  don't  all  have  to 
get  off  the  boat,  do  we?  " 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     513 

"Why,  no,  certainly  not.  That's  the  reason  I  was  so 
interested  in  these  pilgrims.  They  didn't  merely  get  off 
the  boat;  they  left  —  skipped  —  lit  out  —  vamosed  — 
stood  not  on  the  order  of  their  going.  They  didn't  see  me, 
and  I  —  I  made  no  effort  to  be  seen.  I  said  to  the  genial 
sprite  that  dispenses  refreshment  to  the  thirsty,  '  Bar- 
keep,  seems  to  me  those  three  men  are  in  a  kind  of  a  hurry.' 
He  grinned  frightfully  and  answered,  'Yes,  sir,  them  kind 
'most  always  leaves  in  a  hurry.'  And  all  his  attendant 
afrits  in  the  white  jackets  laughed  in  chorus:  'Yah-yah- 
yah!  Yessah,  boss,  dey  sho'ly  does.  Yah-yah-yah ! ' 
'One  of  'em,'  says  I,  then,  'is  that  three-card-monte  man, 
—  the  old  fellow  with  the  gray  hair,  I  'mean.  And  that 
youngest  one  is  his  partner  —  "capper,"  I  understand  to  be 
the  classic  term  —  but  who  is  the  other? '  None  of  them 
would  acknowledge  to  knowing  anything  about  him,  except 
that  they  had  seen  him  in  company  with  Canada  Charlie 
a  good  deal  the  last  few  days.  And  at  last  one  said:  'Why, 
boss,  didn't  he  get  on  with  you-all  at  N'Orleans?  Ain't 
that  the  same  young  feller  that's  been  on  sence  this  hyer 
boat  done  started?'  And,  lo,  Nathan,  I  knew  who  it  was 
all  the  time,  but  kept  my  mouth  shut,  because  — " 

"Was  it  really  George?  "  Burke  asked,  wide  enough  awake 
now.  "Are  you  sure?" 

Jim  nodded.  "I  suppose  Canada  Charlie  has  taken  him 
into  partnership  —  it  looked  like  it.  They  all  got  into  the 
same  carriage,  and  were  plainly  in  company.  I  went  back 
to  George's  room.  It's  all  cleaned  out.  He's  gone  for  good." 

"The  boat  lays  up  here  for  the  day,"  said  Burke;  "we 
may  run  across  him  in  the  town." 

"  Not  likely.     What  would  you  do,  anyhow?  " 

"Why,  I'd  try  and  persuade  him  to  come  along  home  and 
see  his  mother.  Honestly,  though,  you  can't  blame  him 
much  for  not  wanting  to  face  the  people  at  home;  even 
George  must  see  that  everybody  don't  approve  of  him.  Oh, 
well!"  ejaculated  Burke,  philosophically;  "I  guess  we're 
out  of  it,  anyhow,  Jim.  We  did  our  best  for  him.  I'm  going 
back  to  bed  and  get  some  more  sleep." 

When  they  went  ashore  after  breakfast,  some  three  or 
four  hours  later,  the  two  friends  did  indeed  keep  a  sort  of 
lookout  for  George  as  they  walked  about;  but,  as  they  had 

2L 


514  NATHAN   BURKE 

expected,  the  young  man  was  nowhere  to  be  found;  nor  did 
they  even  catch  sight  of  his  companions,  although  they 
visited  some  of  the  best-known  saloons  and  gambling  dens 
with  which  the  place  was  so  plentifully  provided.  St.  Louis, 
even  at  that  date,  was  a  big,  busy  city;  it  would  have  been 
an  easy  matter  for  George  to  avoid  them,  and  their  search 
was  more  or  less  half-hearted  and  perfunctory.  To  tell  the 
truth,  after  George's  recent  vicissitudes,  his  present  associa 
tion  did  not  seem  to  either  of  them  particularly  disgraceful 
or  distressing;  it  was  but  another  variety  of  step  in  that 
Rogues'  March  upon  which  he  had  entered  years  ago. 
Canada  Charlie  had  grown  gray  in  this  trade  without  getting 
into  the  Penitentiary —  "and  old  Mr.  Marsh  always  used 
to  say  that  George  would  keep  out  of  that,  anyhow,"  said  Nat, 
with  a  laugh.  There  is  a  well-defined  point  in  every  scoun 
drel's  career  when  people  cease  to  be  hopeful  or  even  desirous 
of  reforming  him;  they  will  thank  the  kind  Fates  merely  to 
keep  scandal  about  him  hushed  up!  "I  hope  at  least  he 
will  write  his  family  and  get  up  some  story  they  can  believe, 
or  pretend  to  believe,"  Burke  thought,  wondering  if  news 
of  their  return  had  reached  the  town  yet.  The  papers  would 
have  barely  kept  pace  with  us;  and  such  were  the  hazards 
and  delays  of  the  road  in  those  days,  that  no  one  could  ap 
point  with  any  certainty  a  time  for  his  arrival  or  departure; 
it  was  possible  that  our  letters,  written  weeks  before  from 
Mexico,  might  not  yet  have  been  received. 

Not  that  Colonel  Burke  expected  his  fellow-townsmen 
to  turn  out  and  greet  him  with  drums,  cannon,  and  banners; 
he  had  done  nothing  to  deserve  especial  notice,  and,  besides, 
had  had  quite  enough  of  that  species  of  welcome  in  General 
Quitman's  company,  and  was  well  pleased  with  his  present 
comfortable  obscurity.  Yet  I  think  he  spent  some  idle 
moments  picturing  the  pleasant  surprise  and  interest  of  his 
friends  when  he  should  once  more  show  his  tanned  face 
among  them  on  the  familiar  streets  after  all  these  hundreds 
of  miles  and  days.  It  was  nearly  two  years;  a  great  deal 
may  happen  in  that  time  —  a  great  deal  had  happened.  He 
felt  much  more  than  two  years  older,  and,  in  fact,  used  to 
glance  into  the  glass  with  a  little  anxiety  nowadays,  as  he 
shaved  himself  of  a  morning,  at  the  lines  wearing  deeper 
around  his  eyes  and  mouth,  at  the  widening  streaks  of  gray 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     515 

on  his  temples.  We  are  assured  that  it  is  a  man's  privilege 
to  be  homely;  and  I  suppose  if  he  looks  old  and  wrinkled 
into  the  bargain,  it  should  cause  him  no  distress.  But  poor 
Nat  thought  that  he  had  never  laid  eyes  on  such  a  scare 
crow  as  he  had  become;  nor  could  all  the  magnificent  new 
neckties,  studs,  fancy  waistcoats,  and  what-not,  which  he 
feverishly  purchased  of  the  Cincinnati  haberdasher  at  the 
next  stopping  place,  improve  him.  Why  was  Mr.  Burke 
in  such  a  state  of  mind  about  his  looks,  to  which  —  I  freely 
confess  —  he  had  never  given  a  thought  before?  And  why, 
as  they  neared  the  journey's  end,  and  the  days  went  by  with 
a  maddening  slowness,  was  he  irritable,  and  impatient,  and 
uproariously  good-natured,  and  morose,  and  meditative  by 
turns?  If  you  can  find  among  your  acquaintance  some  young 
man  who  has  been  two  years  separated  from  his  sweetheart 
—  she  is,  of  course,  the  most  beautiful  and  fascinating  girl 
on  earth  —  and  feels,  for  certain  reasons,'  a  little  dubious 
about  his  reception,  and  never  has  been  too  sure  of  her  at 
any  time,  and  means  to  insist  on  her  marrying  him  at  once 
and  put  an  end  to  his  torments  —  I  say,  if  you  can  find  such 
a  young  man,  ask  him  what  ailed  Nat  Burke,  and  he  may 
be  able  to  tell  you. 

If  Sharpless  suffered  from  these  alternations  of  temper 
in  his  friend,  he  charitably  refrained  from  resenting  them; 
he  was  quite  acute  enough  to  perceive  their  cause,  and  whether 
the  spectacle  touched  or  annoyed  or  only  amused  him,  Jim's 
unlimited  fund  of  sympathy  and  humanity  kept  him  from 
betraying  it.  He  himself  intended  stopping  over  a  few  days 
in  Cincinnati,  to  see  his  publisher,  or  on  some  like  business, 
and  as  Burke  felt  and  plainly  showed  that  he  would  as  cheer 
fully  spend  a  week  upon  the  rack  as  in  this  particular  city 
at  the  present  time,  they  had  to  part  company.  In  the  dawn 
of  a  cold  December  day,  Nat  got  up  and  took  the  train  for 
home  —  an  ordinary  proceeding  enough  to  modern  notions, 
but  something  of  an  experience  in  those  days,  when  the  rail 
road  was  only  partly  built,  and  we  had  not  yet  ceased  to 
marvel  at  the  hair-raising  speed  an  engine  and  train  of  cars 
could  attain  —  fully  twenty-five  miles  an  hour,  it  was  asserted. 
This  road  was  one  of  the  changes  wrought  in  Burke's  absence, 
and  as  it  was  not  nearly  completed,  he  must  make  the  latter 
half  of  the  journey  by  stage  or  horseback,  as  usual.  It  would 


516  NATHAN   BURKE 

take  him  two  days  to  cover  the  hundred  and  twenty  miles 
-  two  days  yet  before  he  could  see  Her,  malediction !  Jim 
went  along  to  the  station  to  see  him  away;  they  were  both 
a  little  depressed  for  some  reason,  Burke,  who  ought  by 
rights  to  have  been  radiantly  expectant,  was  very  likely 
in  one  of  his  black  moods,  and  the  other  may  have  been 
thinking  with  regret  and  longing  of  his  own  broken  hopes. 
He  was  not  much  given  to  talking  about  himself,  and,  apart 
from  his  letter,  had  scarcely  mentioned  his  rebuff.  "You 
ought  to  ask  her  again/'  Burke  once  counselled  him;  "you 
took  her  by  surprise,  and  maybe  she  didn't  really  know  her 
own  mind.  Why,  Francie  couldn't  help  caring  for  you!" 
But  Sharpless  only  shook  his  head  with  a  rather  twisted 
smile.  "No,  I've  done.  She  as  good  as  told  me  there  was 
somebody  else,  you  know."  He  had  not  been  particularly 
enthusiastic  or  impatient  about  getting  home,  and  several 
times  talked  restlessly  of  going  to  New  York  or  Boston, 
whence  he  had  had  flattering  offers. 

Mr.  Burke,  then,  pressed  on  alone  with  all  possible  expe 
dition,  which  is  not  saying  much,  in'  spite  of  the  new  style 
of  travel,  as  the  stage  roads  were  in  a  very  bad  state  at  this 
season  of  the  year.  And,  although  he  had  laid  aside  every 
kind  of  military  dress,  he  found  himself  with  his  battered  old 
baggage  whereon  the  U.S.A.  stamp  was  still  plainly  discern 
ible,  a  good  deal  stared  at  by  his  fellow-passengers,  who 
speedily  finding  out  whence  he  came,  displayed  a  kind  but 
very  searching  interest  as  to  his  rank,  age,  pay,  and  expe 
riences;  and  were  profoundly  amazed  to  hear  that  it  some 
times  rained  in  Mexico,  and  sometimes  turned  freezing  cold, 
and  that  the  country  was  neither  one  vast  Sahara  nor  a  jungle 
of  palms  and  tropic  fruits  inhabited  by  every  bird,  beast,  and 
reptile  in  creation  like  the  island  of  the  Swiss  Family  Robin 
son.  By  the  time  he  had  answered  all  the  queries:  no,  he 
didn't  know  General  Taylor  —  yes,  he  had  met  General 
Scott  —  no,  he  hadn't  had  the  yellow  fever  —  yes,  he  could 
speak  Spanish  —  no,  the  natives  were  not  black  like  negroes 
—  yes,  he  had  been  in  a  battle  —  no,  he  couldn't  remember 
how  he  felt  exactly,  but  he  didn't  want  to  run  away  —  yes, 
he  had  been  wounded  once  —  no,  he  had  never  happened  to 
run  across  a  private  named  Jake  Brown  —  and  so  on  and  on 
endlessly,  Nat  began  to  weary  of  the  theme;  and  accordingly 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE    517 

decided  to  make  the  last  lap  of  the  road  on  horseback,  which 
he  did,  arriving  in  the  town,  a  solitary  traveller  in  the  manner 
of  Mr.  G.  P.  R.  James's  heroes,  the  afternoon  of  the  day 
before  New  Year's,  1848. 

Dusk  was  falling  and  lights  were  beginning  to  stream  out 
from  the  shops  and  houses  and  from  the  street  lamps  at  the 
corners.  There  was  snow  underfoot;  farmers'  sleighs  and 
bob-sleds  were  hitched  along  the  curb.  When  a  door  here 
or  there  was  opened,  grand  odors  of  frying  ham  and  coffee 
saluted  the  wayfarer.  It  was  not  a  pretty  nor  a  picturesque 
scene;  but  the  young  man  surveyed  it  with  a  great  warming 
of  the  heart.  Thank  God,  he  thought,  half  smiling  yet  in 
real  relief,  no  more  women  and  babies  crouching  in  the  dust, 
no  more  beggars  hideous  with  disease  and  deformity,  no 
more  adobe  walls  and  tumble-down  palaces  gaudily  or  som 
brely  decaying  like  Tadmor  in  the  wilderness!  Here  was 
peace,  decency,  freedom.  A  girl  with  a  red  shawl  over  her 
head  ran  out  of  a  side  door,  and  waited  shivering  and  shrug 
ging,  with  eyes  fixed  on  some  point  a  square  off  whence  the 
sound  of  a  loud,  clear,  penetrating  whistle  approached  in 
company  with  a  man's  step  on  the  plank  sidewalk.  Journeys 
end  in  lovers'  meeting!  Nat  went  on,  coloring  and  smiling 
foolishly  at  his  own  thoughts. 

He  chose  the  quietest  of  the  streets  in  a  fit  of  shyness,  and 
got  to  the  hotel  without  being  challenged  or  recognized. 
The  clerk  was  a  stranger,  and  glanced  indifferently  at 
"N.  Burke"  in  the  register.  He  was,  moreover,  very  busy 
with  a  large  catering  order  which  the  establishment  must 
get  ready  to  be  sent  out  the  next  day,  as  he  condescended  to 
explain  to  several  other  guests  newly  arrived  and  waiting 
patiently  about;  Nathan  was  quite  unnoticed  in  the  bustle. 
He  went  upstairs  to  the  room  which  they  presently  found 
time  to  assign  him,  and  made  an  elaborate  toilette,  trying 
two  or  three  of  the  new  cravats  hurriedly  and  nervously, 
at  last  pausing  in  the  very  act  of  selecting  another  —  black, 
miraculously  figured  with  trefoils  or  shamrocks  in  dull  silk 
on  a  shining  satin  ground  —  and  looking  at  himself  in  the 
mirror  with  an  angry  laugh.  He  threw  the  thing  aside, 
and  got  into  the  rest  of  his  clothes  without  looking  again, 
finding  his  hand  mechanically  missing  and  fumbling  for  the 
hilt  of  his  sword,  and  his  belt  and  pistol;  there  they  lay  in 


518  NATHAN   BURKE 

their  black  oil-cloth  cases  alongside  his  valise;  the  warrior 
was  returned!  He  put  carefully  into  his  pocket  a  purple 
morocco  case  enshrining  a  chain  and  locket  of  filigree  silver 
set  with  turquoise  —  Mary  was  one  of  those  black-haired 
and  white-skinned  beauties  to  whom  blue  was  ravishingly 
becoming;  she  looked  pretty  in  anything,  for  that  matter, 
the  lover  thought  fondly,  remembering  with  pride  the  dainty 
distinction  of  her  walk,  her  dress,  her  little  head  with  the 
shining,  rich  braids.  As  he  was  leaving  the  hotel  office,  a 
boy  ran  after  him:  " Supper's  at  six,  sir,  I  was  to  ask  would 
you  be  here?"  " Why  —  ah  —  I  don't  know.  No,  I  don't 
believe  I  shall,"  Burke  said,  hesitating;  and  bestowed  on  the 
lad  —  it  was  the  Boots,  I  think  —  a  tip  the  size  of  which 
evidently  astonished  that  functionary  even  more  than  it 
delighted  him. 

Mr.  Burke  hurried  along  at  a  slightly  less  speed  than  if  he 
had  been  running  to  a  fire  until  he  was  within  a  block  of  the 
house  when  he,  inconsistently  enough,  slackened  to  a  very 
slow  walk  —  a  dawdle,  in  fact !  She  could  hardly  be  expect 
ing  him  —  not  at  this  precise  moment,  anyhow;  his  appear 
ance  might  be  too  sudden,  a  sort  of  shock.  It  was  incon 
siderate  —  he  ought  to  have  sent  a  note  —  why  hadn't  he 
sent  a  note?  To  be  sure  he  might  do  that  yet;  but  to  turn 
back  now,  after  all  this  preparation,  was  beyond  him.  He 
could  only  force  himself  to  walk  slowly  up  the  other  side  of 
the  street,  and  stand  a  minute  with  his  heart  thumping  in  a 
ridiculous  fashion  against  the  morocco  leather  case  and 
Mary's  last  letter  lying  together  in  his  breast  pocket.  There 
was  a  light  in  her  window  —  in  all  the  windows;  the  house 
looked  brighter  than  he  ever  remembered  seeing  it.  On 
the  front  porch  there  stood  some  objects  which  he  presently 
recognized  to  be  a  table  and  folding  chairs  and  trestles,  the 
furniture  of  some  one  of  Mrs.  Sharpless's  sewing-circles, 
or  Sunday-school  classes,  probably.  It  looked  so  familiar 
he  might  have  gone  away  but  yesterday.  Why  was  he 
standing  there  in  the  cold  and  snow  staring  at  those  lighted 
windows?  He  wanted  to  collect  himself,  wondering  at  his 
own  excitement;  he  was  reminded,  unpleasantly  and  inap 
propriately,  of  Rawdon  Crawley's  home-coming  —  the  book 
was  just  out  that  year,  and  Nathan  had  bought  a  copy  of  it 
in  New  Orleans  and  read  it  on  the  boat  coming  up. 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     519 

The  maid  of  all  work,  coming  to  the  door  at  his  knock, 
was  new  and  did  not  know  him.  Miss  Sharpless  had  gone 
out,  she  said,  looking  the  stranger  over  with  interest. 

"Out?"  echoed  poor  Nat  —  he  had  never  thought  of  that 
most  natural  chance,  and  was  grievously  disappointed.  Yet 
why  shouldn't  she  be  out?  She  could  not  be  expected  to  stay 
in  the  house  for  days,  merely  because  he  had  said  he  would 
be  home  somewhere  about  the  first  of  the  year.  He  ought 
to  have  written  a  note,  he  told  himself  again  in  vexation. 

"She's  gone  out  sleigh-riding,  sir/'  the  servant  volunteered 
with  some  excitement  and  subdued  eagerness;  she  was  a 
comely,  fresh-faced  young  country-girl.  "She  said  before 
she  went  that  she  knew  it  wasn't  usual  at  this  time,  but  she's 
awfully  tired,  and  she  thought  maybe  the  air  would  do  her 
good,  and  she'd  be  sorry  to  miss  anybody,  but  she  couldn't 
help  it.  And  if  there's  anything  you  want  to  leave  for  her, 
sir,  of  course  it'll  be  perfectly  safe." 

Burke  heard  the  chatter  uncomprehendingly,  without 
indeed  paying  much  heed  to  it.  For  him  the  main  fact 
was  that  he  must  wait  another  while  yet  before  seeing  Mary. 
He  was  about  to  ask  for  her  mother,  when  he  heard  that  lady's 
voice  from  within,  inquiring :  — 

"  Is  that  the  man  with  the  meringues?  Tell  him  to  go  around 
to  the  back  door,  Jennie.  They  ought  to  be  kept  cool.  I 
think  the  wash-house  will  be  the  best  place  —  She  ap 
peared  in  the  parlor  door,  one  arm  full  of  a  cascading  mass 
of  satin,  gauze,  ribbons,  white  artificial  flowers  of  some  kind, 
taking  a  pin  out  of  her  mouth  as  she  spoke.  "Jennie,  you 
can  take  this  up  and  lay  it  on  Miss  Mary's  bed.  I  think 
I've  got  it  fixed  right  now.  I'll  attend  to  the  meringues. 
Are  you  the  man  from  — " 

"It's  I,  Mrs.  Sharpless,"  said  Burke,  a  little  awkwardly 
and  nervously,  afraid  of  startling  her;  he  stepped  into  the 
light,  taking  off  his  hat;  "it's  I  —  Na  - 

She  stopped  short,  staring  almost  wildly;  she  turned  quite 
pale  and  put  out  a  hand  to  steady  herself  against  the  door- 
jamb,  trembling.  The  satin  and  lace  garment  slid  rustling 
to  the  floor,  from  which  Jennie  barely  rescued  it.  "NA 
THAN —  Nathan  Burke!"  gasped  Mrs.  Sharpless,  shrilly; 
"what  do  you  want?  How  did  you  get  here  ?" 

"I'm  so  sorry,  Mrs,  Sharpless,  I  didn't  mean  to  scare 


520  NATHAN    BURKE 

you,"  said  the  young  fellow,  much  distressed.  "I  ought  to 
have  sent  word,  of  course,  but  I  —  I  felt  as  if  I  couldn't  wait. 
I  just  got  home  to-day.  Didn't  you  know  I  would  get  home 
about  this  time?  I  thought  surely  Mary  would  have  got 
one  of  my  letters  —  didn't  she?" 

' '  Mary  get  your  letters?     Mary? ' '  repeated  Mrs.  Sharpless. 
"Have  you  been  writing  to  her?     Why,  you  can't  have — 
what  do  you  mean  to  do?     What  are  you  here  for?" 

"Why,  where  else  would  I  go  the  first  thing?"  said  Nat, 
in  his  steadiest  voice,  trying  to  reassure  her,  although  he  was 
inwardly  a  little  concerned;  Mrs.  Sharpless  was  ordinarily 
a  sensible  and  cool-headed  woman;  even  if  taken  by  surprise, 
she  would  not  have  gone  into  the  hysterics  on  which  she 
seemed  to  be  bordering  at  the  moment.  She  was  evidently 
too  startled  by  his  sudden  return  to  be  pleased  at  seeing  him. 
"I  was  thoughtless  —  I  ought  to  have  let  you  know.  But 
then  I  supposed  you'd  be  expecting  me  almost  any  day  now, 
you  see.  I'll  never  forgive  myself  for  giving  you  this  shock, 
though." 

She  gazed  up  at  him  blankly,  yet  with  a  look  in  her  face 
as  of  straining  to  understand,  like  one  conscious  of  hearing 
important  news  but  in  an  unknown  tongue.  She  did  not 
take,  nor  even  see,  the  young  man's  outstretched  hand. 
" Where's  Jim?"  she  said  abruptly.  "Is  he  with  you? 
Didn't  he  come,  too?" 

"He's  well  —  he's  all  right-  Burke  said  quickly, 
thinking  he  understood  at  last,  and  anxious  to  relieve  the 
mother's  heart;  "he  came  with  me  as  far  as  Cincinnati, 
and  I  left  him  there.  He'll  be  here  inside  the  week.  Jim's 
all  right,  safe  and  sound,  and  sent  his  love  to  everybody. 
Don't  be  worried  about  him." 

"Did  Jim  write,  too?" 

"Why,  yes,  I  suppose  so.  Yes,  I'm  sure  he  did.  The 
letters  haven't  come?" 

"Haven't  you  got  any  letters  from  us?"  asked  Mrs.  Sharp- 
less  in  a  strange  voice;  "haven't  you  —  no,  wait  a  minute, 
Nathan  —  Colonel  Burke,  I  mean  —  don't  answer  yet,  I 
— I  want  to  talk  to  you  -  "  she  commanded  herself  with  a 
visible  effort,  and  turned  to  the  staring  servant-girl.  "Jen 
nie,  go  upstairs.  Take  Miss  Mary's  dress  upstairs,  and  then 
you  can  go  back  to  the  kitchen.  The  gentleman  wants  to  see 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     521 

me  on  business.  He  wants  to  see  me, "  she  interpolated  hur 
riedly;  "you  mustn't  disturb  Mr.  Sharpless  on  any  account. 
Will  you  come  in  here,  Mr.  Burke?  " 

He  followed  her,  puzzled  and  troubled,  into  the  well-known 
little  parlor,  which  now  itself  looked  somehow  strange. 
Mary's  piano  had  been  pushed  back  into  a  corner,  and  almost 
all  the  other  furniture  was  gone;  but  side  by  side  with  this 
bareness  the  room  wore  a  certain  air  of  festivity;  garlands 
of  evergreen  trimmed  the  curtains,  and  there  were  fresh 
white  wax  candles  in  the  old  girandoles  on  the  mantel-shelf. 
The  minister's  wife  did  not  ask  him  to  sit  down;  she  seemed 
to  have  forgotten  all  the  everyday  civilities,  even  when  she 
had  after  a  fashion  regained  her  composure. 

"I  don't  see  what  you  wanted  to  come  here  for,  Nat — 
Mr.  Burke,  I  mean,"  she  began  with  a  kind  of  uncertain 
severity;  "I  can't  understand  it  —  unless  it  is  that  you 
don't  know,  and  that's  impossible.  Why,  you  must  have 
known  —  of  course  not  the  exact  day,  but  I  should  have 
thought  you  wouldn't  want  to  come,  anyhow.  It  can't  be 
that  you  — ?"  her  voice  trailed  off  into  a  questioning  silence; 
she  looked  at  him  with  something  like  fright  in  her  eyes. 

"I  came  to  see  Mary,"  said  Burke,  quite  calmly,  in  spite 
of  a  wretched  foreboding;  "  I  do  not  know  of  any  reason  why 
I  should  not  come  to  see  her." 

"But  she  wrote  you  —  I  know  she  wrote  you.  That  is, 
she  said  she  was  going  to.  She  must  have  written  —  why, 
she  had  to — "cried  Mrs.  Sharpless.  "I  can't  understand 
it!" 

"Nor  I,"  said  Burke,  roused  and  peremptory.  "What  is 
all  this  about?  Mary  wrote  me,  as  you  say.  I  have  her 
letter  here.  There  is  nothing  in  it  to  keep  me  from  coming 
here,  if  that  is  what  you  mean.  If  she  wanted  to  break  with 
me,  she  hasn't  said  so  — 

"Nathan!"  Mrs.  Sharpless  almost  screamed,  "nothing! 
Oh,  I  knew  you  didn't  know  —  I  felt  it  from  the  first.  You 
haven't  got  her  letter,  or  else  —  "  she  flung  out  her  hands  with 
a  despairing  gesture.  "Oh,  I  don't  know  how  it's  all  hap 
pened.  You  ought  to  have  known  long  ago.  I  thought 
you  had  been  told.  Nathan,  Mary's  going  to  be  married." 

"Married?     When?" 

"It's  to-morrow  —  the  wedding's  to-morrow.     She's  go- 


522  NATHAN    BURKE 

ing  to  be  married  to  Leonard  Andrews.  They've  been 
engaged  since  last  August." 

She  paused,  perhaps  expecting  a  burst  of  questions,  re 
proaches,  anger,  resentment.  But  Burke,  after  his  first 
exclamation,  stood  silent.  I  do  not  think  that  he  was 
stunned  or  overwhelmed.  He  was  conscious  only  of  a  labo 
rious  effort  to  adjust  his  mind  to  the  facts. 

"Mary  wrote  to  you  in  the  summer,  breaking  off  >our 
engagement,"  Mrs.  Sharpless  began  again,  seemingly  a  little 
taken  aback  by  his  silence;  "I  know  she  wrote  —  she  said 
so." 

"She  said  so?"  Nathan  repeated.  "I  never  got  any  such 
letter  from  her,  Mrs.  Sharpless." 

"Well,  Mary  couldn't  help  its  being  lost,  or  going  astray 
somehow  —  nobody  could  help  that,"  said  the  mother, 
defensively;  "Mary  acted  perfectly  honorably  with  you, 
Colonel  Burke,  however  you  acted  towards  her." 

"What  is  that  you  say  to  me?"  said  Nat. 

Mrs.  Sharpless  flinched  a  little  before  his  steady  eyes, 
yet  fronted  him  with  spirit;  the  color  rose  in  her  delicate, 
aging  face.  "You  couldn't  expect  any  self-respecting  girl 
to  marry  you  after  —  after  that  story  —  you  know  very  well 
what  I  mean  —  after  that  got  to  be  known,  Colonel  Burke." 

"Not  if  she  believed  it,"  Burke  said.  "I  shouldn't  want 
any  woman  to  marry  me  believing  a  thing  like  that  about 
me.  I  should  want  her  to  love  me." 

"Nathan,  Mary  did  care  for  you  —  she  did  — 

"If  she  had,  she  would  have  trusted  me  a  little,  I  think," 
said  Burke.  "Could  anyone  have  made  me  believe  any 
thing  against  her?" 

"But  that  would  be  different  —  and  you  oughtn't  to  talk 
that  way  about  Mary,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  indignantly; 
"  as  if  Mary  would  —  would  do  anything  wrong !  It's  shame 
ful  to  say  things  like  that.  How  could  she  help  believing 
it?  You  never  denied  it.  If  it  wasn't  true,  why  didn't 
you  say  so?  Why  didn't  you  prove  it  wasn't  true?" 

"You  forget  that  I  didn't  know  Mary  accused  me,"  said 
Nathan;  " one  cannot  prove  or  disprove  such  a  story .  You 
know  that  in  your  heart,  Mrs.  Sharpless,  and  so  does  Mary, 
and  so  does  everybody  that  hears  it.  If  you  choose  to  be 
lieve  it,  you  will  believe  it  —  that's  all.  I  might  say  that  I 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     523 

have  the  name  of  an  honest  and  decent  man  —  that  goes  for 
nothing!  I  might  say  that  if  the  story  were  true,  I  would 
not  have  the  effrontery  to  be  here  now,  in  your  house  — 
that  goes  for  nothing,  too!  As  you  say,  I  knew  very  well 
what  people  here  were  reporting  about  me  —  Jim  told  me 
when  he  came  down  to  Mexico  a  year  ago;  I  might  deny 
it  or  tell  my  side,  but  it  would  come  to  the  same  old  ques 
tion  in  the  end  —  do  you  believe  me,  or  don't  you  believe 
me?  I  thought  at  least  the  woman  who  was  to  be  my  wife 
would  stand  up  for  me.  She  couldn't,  it  seems;  and  that 
was  perhaps  natural  — 

"Oh,  it's  easy  for  you  to  talk,  and  make  out  a  good  case," 
said  Mrs.  Sharpless,  with  an  extraordinary  mixture  of  doubt, 
worry,  regret,  uneasiness,  and  genuine  distress  showing  in  her 
face.  "  You're  a  lawyer,  and  they  always  know  how  to  talk 
and  argue.  And,  anyhow,  it's  not  my  doing,  Nathan,  I  don't 
know  what  you  want  to  talk  this  way  to  me  for.  I  never 
wanted  to  believe  anything  against  you  —  nobody  could 
want  to  think  that  horrid  thing  true,  you  know  —  I  don't 
see  how  you  can  say  that.  But  Mary  —  Mary's  always 
had  her  own  way  ever  since  she  was  a  little  girl,  and  I  —  I  - 
why,  she  couldn't  help  breaking  off  the  engagement.  If  you 
could  have  heard  how  everybody  talked  —  not  Leonard, 
you  know,"  she  interrupted  herself  quickly;  " Leonard's 
never  said  a  word,  though  he  was  coming  here  all  the  time, 
and  had  plenty  of  chances,  but  he  —  he  hadn't  asked  Mary 
then,  and  I  suppose  he  thought  it  wouldn't  be  honorable  to 
talk  about  you.  It's  terrible  you  didn't  get  her  letter  —  that 
would  have  saved  you  coming  here  just  at  this  time.  I'm 
so  sorry  it  happened  this  way  —  it  makes  it  so  hard  for  you 

"  and  here  Mrs.  Sharpless,  appearing  by  some  inexpli 
cable  feminine  process  to  have  actually  wrought  herself  into 
some  kind  of  sympathy  for  the  young  man,  either  as  a  dis 
carded  lover,  or  a  victim  of  scandal,  or  both,  broke  into  little 
sobs,  carefully  subdued,  even  in  her  excitement,  for  fear 
of  disturbing  the  reverend  gentleman  in  the  study  across 
the  hall.  It  was  as  if  she  were  divided  between  maternal 
loyalty,  and  an  agonizing  suspicion  that  somebody  —  not 
Burke  alone  —  had  done  something  wrong;  a  note  of  defence 
and  explanation  sounded  through  her  words.  The  spectacle 
of  her  tears  would  have  moved  him  unbearably  at  any  other 


524  NATHAN   BURKE 

time;  but  just  now  Nat  was  pardonably,  I  think,  if  selfishly, 
absorbed  in  his  own  affair,  and  something  in  her  speech  had 
caught  his  attention. 

"  Andrews  was  coming  here  all  the  time,  was  he?  "  he  asked. 

"Why,  yes  —  Mary  couldn't  help  it,  you  know.  Young 
men  have  always  come  to  see  her;  she's  so  attractive.  And 
he  knew  she  was  engaged;  Mary  never  tried  to  hide  that. 
I'm  sure  he  never  said  a  word  to  her —  proposed,  you  know 
—  till  last  August,  and  then  Mary  wrote  to  you  right  away," 
said  poor  Mrs.  Sharpless,  innocently,  in  the  eagerness  of  her 
justification.  "I  know  Leonard  never  mentioned  your  name 
—  nor  that  story,  nor  anything.  He  wouldn't  take  advan 
tage  of  such  a  thing.  Leonard's  very  honorable.  They  did 
have  a  little  tiff  once.  I  know  when  it  happened,  in  the  fall 
sometime,  because  he  didn't  come  to  the  house  for  two  or 
three  days.  But  they  made  it  up,  and  I'm  sure  it  wasn't 
about  you." 

Nathan  thought  of  the  letter  in  his  pocket,  with  its  graceful 
endearments.  These  dates  fitted  only  too  well.  Her 
"hero"  indeed!  And  I  suppose  his  expression  must  have 
astonished  and  rather  frightened  Mrs.  Sharpless,  for  he  al 
most  laughed  aloud  in  the  suddenness  of  his  illumination. 

The  mother's  eyes  searched  his  face;  then  all  at  once,  she 
burst  out  vehemently;  "Nathan,  it's  not  so!  It's  not  so,  what 
you're  thinking.  Have  you  seen  anybody?  You  have  been 
talking  to  somebody.  I  know  people  were  mean  enough  to 
say  that.  But  it's  not  so;  Mary  never  did  a  thing  like  that. 
Keep  you  dangling  till  she  was  sure  of  Leonard  —  oh,  I 
know  what  people  said!  Who  told  you?  They're  all  jeal 
ous  of  Mary.  You  haven't  any  right  to  believe,  that  about 
her.  It's  not  so!" 

"What  isn't  so?  What  are  you  talking  about?"  said 
Burke,  a  little  lamely,  startled  at  the  justice  of  her  intuition. 
But  before  she  could  answer,  Comedy  intervened  trivially 
upon  the  trivial  Tragedy  of  this  interview;  the  servant  came 
knocking  at  the  door,  and  partly  opening  it,  in  a  highly 
natural  curiosity.  The  meringue  man  had  arrived;  would 
Mrs.  Sharpless  please  come?  He  wanted  her  to  sign  for 
them  — 

"Oh,  "mercy!"  said  the  poor  lady,  in  desperation.  She 
dabbled  the  tears  away  hastily.  "Can't  he  wait?  Can't 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     525 

you  sign  —  there  ought  to  be  five  dozen  of  them.      Oh,  well, 
I'll  go  then—" 

She  went  away,  leaving  Mr.  Burke  to  meditate  upon 
the  recent  enlightenment;  and  it  was  hardly  a  pleasant 
five  minutes  that  the  young  man  spent  alone  with  his 
anger,  his  jealousy,  his  disappointed  passion,  his  sorely 
mortified  vanity.  That  Mary  should  have  thrown  him  over 
for  a  miserable  bit  of  gossip  was  sufficiently  bitter,  but 
Nathan  had  generosity  enough  to  allow  that  it  was  natural  — 
it  was  what  nine  women  out  of  ten  would  have  done  in  her 
place,  helpless,  surrounded  and  worked  upon  by  adverse  opin 
ion  and  spiteful  or  careless  talk.  If  she  had  cared  for  him  a 
little  more  —  but  it  was  cruelly  plain  to  him  now  that  she  had 
never  cared  for  him  at  all;  he  had  had  his  moments  of  doubt 
ing  her  before,  but  that  did  not  make  the  truth  any  more 
palatable  when  it  was  finally  forced  upon  him.  He  had  never 
been  anything  but  a  convenience  with  his  attentions,  his 
gifts,  his  handy  devotion.  Mary  had  had  the  like  from  some 
man  all  her  life;  it  pleased  her,  it  flattered  her,  she  liked  it; 
better  he,  Nathan  Burke,  than  nobody.  And,  when  the 
moment  came,  what  a  foil,  what  a  goad,  what  a  coquette's 
tool  to  egg  on  some  other  man  !  He  ground  his  teeth  on  the 
thought.  She  had  made  Leonard  fast  without  letting  Burke 
go  —  admirable  prudence  and  calculation !  But  what  would 
she  have  done  to  get  rid  of  me,  thought  Nat,  with  gruesome 
irony,  if  this  scandal  hadn't  fortunately  come  up?  It  would 
have  taxed  even  Mary's  resources  to  have  manufactured  an 
excuse  for  dismissing  him;  but  that  she  would  have  done  it 
he  did  not  doubt.  The  reflection  that  she  might  even  have 
been  capable  of  marrying  him  in  case  no  better  match  pre 
sented,  was  as  acid  a  morsel  as  the  rest.  For,  alas,  my 
friends,  all  poor  Nathan's  talk  of  his  own  unworthiness  was, 
like  that  of  other  lovers,  an  unconscious  sham,  a  piece  of 
depreciation  which  you  and  I  will  utter  of  ourselves,  but  can 
not  stomach  from  somebody  else;  and,  in  his  heart  of  hearts, 
I  dare  say  Burke  thought  he  was  good  enough  for  anybody. 
He  was  pacing  up  and  down  the  narrow  room,  when  the 
sound  of  sleigh-bells  and  of  the  vehicle  drawing  up  at  the  door 
started  him  from  his  gloomy  reviewing;  and  Mrs.  Sharpless 
came  hurrying  back  at  the  instant.  "It's  they  —  it's  Mary 
-1— they've  come  back,  you  know.  You  —  you'd  better 


526  NATHAN   BURKE 

go,  hadn't  you,  Nathan?  You  don't  want  to  stay  now,  do 
you  ?  You  can  go  out  the  back  way  if  you  hurry,"  she  said, 
breathlessly  appealing. 

Burke  almost  smiled.  He  saw  himself  stealing  out  the 
back  way  like  the  villain  or  the  guilty  lover  in  a  melodrama  — - 
he,  who  had  done  nothing !  I  believe  there  never  was  a  crisis, 
no  matter  how  supremely  serious,  that  lacked  some  element 
of  the  grotesque. 

"I  said  before  that  I  knew  of  no  reason  why  I  shouldn't  be 
here,  and  I  don't  now,"  he  said. 

" You're  not  going  to  do  anything,  Nathan?" 

"Do  I  look  as  if  I  meant  violence?"  inquired  Burke;  "I 
assure  you  I  won't  do  any  harm  to  anybody." 

She  looked  at  him,  hesitating;  and  the  young  man's  heart 
smote  him  at  sight  of  the  distress  in  her  face.  For  shame, 
Nat  Burke,  he  thought  remorsefully,  what  has  this  poor 
mother  done  to  you?  None  of  this  is  her  fault;  and  what 
kind  of  a  mother  would  she  be  not  to  stand  by  her  daughter, 
and  put  the  best  front  on  it  she  can? 

"Don't  be  worried,  Mrs.  Sharpless,"  he  said  gently;  "I 
can't  run  away,  you  know.  I  don't  mean  to  do  anything,  as 
you  say.  I  should  be  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  stand  be 
tween  Mary  and  her  happiness.  I  only  want  to  speak  to  her ; 
and  you  yourself  know  that  I  am  in  no  position  to  find  fault 
with  or  reproach  her." 

She  looked  at  him  again,  the  tears  rising  in  her  eyes,  and 
turned  towards  the  door.  They  heard  Mary's  step  on  the 
porch,  her  hand  on  the  latch  —  Burke  thought  he  would 
have  recognized  the  sound  of  her  movements  in  a  thousand. 
She  was  calling  a  gay  good-by,  and  Andrews' s  voice  answered 
her  from  the  street.  Mrs.  Sharpless  came  back  impulsively, 
and  laid  her  hand  on  Burke's  arm;  her  tears  dropped  and 
glistened  on  his  coat  sleeve.  "Nathan,"  she  whispered 
chokingly,  "I  never  believed  that  story  —  I  can't  believe  it. 
I  don't  care  what  anybody  says  —  there ! "  She  went  quickly 
out  into  the  hall.  "Go  in  there,  Mary.  There's  somebody 
to  see  you ! "  and  she  went  on  upstairs,  treading  more 
heavily  than  she  used;  and  Mary  came  into  the  room. 

She  stood  still  at  sight  of  him,  her  hands  at  her  throat  in  the 
act  of  loosening  her  bright  hood  and  scarf  and  thick  white  furs. 
Little  silky  strands  of  black  hair  had  been  blown  across  her 


COLONEL   BURKE   GETS   HIS   DISCHARGE     527 

forehead,  and  she  put  them  back  mechanically,  staring.  She 
did  not  cry  out  or  turn  pale  as  her  mother  had  done;  perhaps 
Mary  was  much  better  prepared  for  such  a  meeting.  Her 
clear  and  deep  gray  eyes  met  Burke' s  without  faltering. 
Why  should  they?  What  had  she  to  be  ashamed  of? 

" Colonel  Burke?"  she  said,  after  a  moment,  with  a  little 
rising  inflection;  and  finished  removing  her  wraps. 

"I  understand  my  letters  haven't  got  here  yet.  I  apolo 
gized  to  your  mother  for  coming  upon  her  so  suddenly,  but  of 
course  I  supposed  you  would  be  looking  for  me,"  said  Burke, 
striving  unsuccessfully  for  an  equal  self-command. 

She  made  a  slight  movement  with  her  head  and  hands 
which  might  have  meant  assent,  and  sat  down.  To  this  hour 
Burke  does  not  know  whether  she  had  received  the  letters  or 
not.  He  went  on:  "It  seems  that  other  letters  must  have 
miscarried,  for  I  —  I  didn't  know  that  you  —  that  I  —  that 
we  weren't  engaged  any  longer.  I  never  heard  from  you, 
breaking  everything  off." 

"After  what  has  been  reported  about  you,  Colonel  Burke," 
said  Mary,  folding  her  veil  neatly  and  raising  her  calm  eyes 
to  his,  "I  am  surprised  you  could  have  supposed  yourself 
engaged  to  me  any  longer.  I  don't  see  that  there  was  any 
necessity  for  me  to  write  you,  or  how  you  could  have  expected 
me  to  say  anything  to  you  about  it.  You  must  have  known 
that  acting  that  way  —  doing  what  you  did  —  would  put  an 
end  to  everything  between  us,  if  it  ever  was  known.  And  of 
course  it  had  to  be  known  —  those  things  are  always  found 
out.  I  am  very  much  surprised  that  you  came  here  at  all." 

She  sat  there,  cool,  sweet-faced,  passionless,  and  delivered 
this  little  speech  in  a  clear  and  level  voice,  assuming  his  guilt, 
and  putting  him  in  the  wrong  with  a  kind  of  serene  assurance 
and  finality.  Burke  looked  at  her  —  and  all  the  affection, 
all  the  jealousy,  all  even  of  the  helpless  resentment  within 
him,  fell  down  and  died  without  a  struggle.  What  had  he 
been  worshipping  all  this  while?  Mary  Sharpless,  or  a  bright 
youthful  vision  she  had  some  way  embodied?  To  find  her  no 
angel,  but  a  selfish  and  calculating  woman,  hurt  him  only  in 
that  it  most  ruthlessly  forced  him  to  destroy  that  young  illu 
sion;  himself  he  grasped  the  pillars  of  his  house  of  dreams, 
and  shook  it  down.  The  selfishness  that  reared  it  was  per 
haps  not  so  ugly  as  Mary's,  yet  of  the  same  stuff  when  all  was 


528  NATHAN   BURKE 

said;  I  think  he  had  been  in  love  with  being  in  love,  not  with 
Mary  Sharpless;  and  it  was  Nat  Burke's  home  and  hearth 
and  wedded  happiness  he  had  pictured  so  fondly,  not  hers. 

"This  is  the  end,  then,"  he  said,  after  a  silence;  "  forgive 
me  for  coming.  I  did  not  know.  Good-by." 

He  went  toward  the  door.  He  had  been  so  short  a  time  in 
the  house  that  the  outer  cold  still  clung  about  his  clothes  and 
heavy  greatcoat.  Mary's  eyes  followed  him  with  a  strange 
expression.  Perhaps  she  had  expected,  and  armed  herself 
against,  an  angry  scene  of  reproaches,  protests,  denuncia 
tions;  his  submission  seemed  to  puzzle,  almost  to  annoy  her. 
His  hand  was  on  the  latch  when  she  spoke  again  —  in  an 
altered  voice,  and  not  nearly  so  composedly.  "I  —  I  —  this 
is  only  the  merest  justice  to  myself  —  and  —  and  others  — 
only  justice.  You  must  see  —  you  can't  but  understand 
that  —  that  —  that  - 

"I  do  understand,"  said  Burke,  without  rancor.  Their 
eyes  met  again;  in  that  last  look,  both  perceived,  with  a  sud 
den  chilling  of  the  heart,  that  something  was  gone  from  their 
faces  and  their  lives,  and  would  never  come  back  any  more. 
It  was  Youth.  Nathan  went  out  of  the  house,  and  closed  the 
door. 

Mr.  Burke  walked  slowly  back  to  his  hotel,  and  slowly  to 
the  bedroom  where  all  his  gala  clothes  were  still  strewn  about 
in  disorder.  Feeling  in  his  pockets  —  not  for  a  pistol  or  a 
vial  of  poison,  0  romance-monger,  but,  tout  bonnement,  for  a 
handkerchief  to  wipe  his  nose !  —  he  encountered  the  purple 
morocco  case.  He  balanced  it  in  his  hand  a  moment,  then 
threw  it  back  into  the  portmanteau  with  a  sort  of  laugh,  and 
straightway  went  off  and  forgot  all  about  it.  Years  after 
ward  the  thing  turned  up  in  his  old  army  baggage  with  other 
rubbish  in  the  garret,  and  was  donated  for  a  prize  to  be 
raffled  off  at  one  of  the  sanitary  fairs  they  used  to  hold  dur 
ing  the  late  war  for  the  benefit  of  our  men  in  the  field! 

His  friend  the  Boots  erelong  came  to  the  door.  "We  been 
kinder  busy,  sir,  gittin'  off  the  things  for  the  weddin '-break 
fast  —  there's  a  weddin'  in  town  to-morrow,"  he  said,  mop 
ping  his  tired  brow;  "supper's  ready.  Concluded  you'd 
come  back,  after  all,  didn't  you?" 


CHAPTER  XV 

"'HERE'S  SORRY  CHEER!'  QUOTH  THE  HEIR  o'  LYNNE" 

I  BELIEVE  it  has  been  remarked  elsewhere  in  the  course  of 
this  history  that  if  Truth,  crushed  to  earth,  will  invariably 
rise  again,  it  has  still  nothing  like  the  tough  and  enduring 
vitality  of  a  good  lie.  Not  long  since,  Mr.  Burke,  sitting  in 
his  private  office,  which  is  separated  from  the  profane  vulgar 
by  a  rich  screen  or  partition  of  woodwork  and  ground  glass, 
heard,  through  his  door,  which  happened  to  be  hanging  ajar, 
a  scrap  of  conversation  between  two  clients,  meeting  un 
expectedly  without.  And  said  one:  "Hello,  does  Burke 
attend  to  your  legal  business  too?  I  didn't  know  that." 

"Yes,  oh,  yes.     Has  for  years;  began  with  my  father." 

"Fine  old  gentleman,  the  old  general,  isn't  he?  Nice  old 
fellow!" 

"Yes,  and  it's  strange  they  say  he  was  a  very  wild  sort  of 
young  man  —  not  much  good." 

"Is  that  so?  Drank,  hey?  Spree'd?  I  guess  a  lot  of 
'em  drank  pretty  hard  in  those  days." 

"Well,  no,  I  never  heard  that.  No,  it  was  women  that  was 
the  matter  with  Burke,  father  used  to  say.  Finally  he  ruined 
some  poor  girl,  and  it  made  a  terrible  talk.  She  died,  and 
Burke  had  to  get  out  of  town;  that  was  when  he  went  off  to 
the  Mexican  War,  you  know.  It  seems  he  was  engaged  at 
the  very  time  to  a  nice  girl  here  at  home;  but,  of  course,  when 
she  heard  of  it,  she  broke  off  with  him  —  and  the  whole  thing 
made  a  man  of  him.  He  straightened  up  after  that,  and 
never  misbehaved  again  —  at  least  not  that  anybody  ever 
heard  of,  my  father  said.  You'd  never  think  it  to  look  at  him 
now,  would  you?  "  And  here  the  aged  reprobate  behind  the 
screen,  signalling  his  presence  by  a  stentorian  cough,  put  an 
end  to  these  reminiscences.  After  forty  years  of  living  with 
it,  you  might  have  supposed  him  habituated  to  the  stigma, 
as  the  Indian  fakir  teaches  himself  to  endure  all  sorts  of  bodily 
inconvenience,  and  goes  about  with  one  arm  grown  to  his 
2M  529 


530  NATHAN   BURKE 

side,  or  a  nail  through  his  nose,  in  great  peace  of  mind;  but 
Burke  never  quite  learned  their  stalwart  philosophy;  and  to 
this  day  that  shameful  imputation,  old  as  it  is  and  irremedi 
able,  has  power  to  sting  him  deeply. 

Although  the  scandal  was  a  year  old,  and  must  have  been 
pretty  well  turned  over  in  that  time,  it  got  a  fresh  start  with 
Burke's  reappearance,  and  flourished  magnificently.  I  can 
conceive  that  nowadays  it  might  not  have  been  so  venomous, 
nor  have  so  attracted  and,  as  it  were,  concentrated  the  notice 
of  the  community;  but  in  our  small  society,  where  everybody 
knew  everybody  else's  business,  where  not  one-fourth  so 
much  of  public  and  outside  interest  distracted  us  as  to-day, 
and  where  the  young  man  had  attained  a  certain  prominence, 
the  story  went  the  rounds  with  incredible  briskness,  and,  bad 
enough  already,  received  nobody  knows  how  many  unsavory 
additions.  The  ladies,  who  were  by  no  means  the  most  back 
ward  in  spreading  it,  were  obliged  in  common  decency  and 
self-respect  to  pass  this  hero  on  the  street  without  recognition, 
to  close  their  virtuous  parlors  against  him,  to  frown  and  shake 
their  heads,  and  cast  their  blushing  looks  downwards  when 
ever  his  name  was  mentioned  —  in  public.  And  although 
the  masculine  half  were,  as  is  generally  the  case,  most  sin 
fully  tolerant,  and  out  of  sympathy,  or  indifference,  or  sheer 
perversity  continued  to  associate  even  with  such  a  moral  leper 
as  Nat  Burke, — who,  strange  to  relate,  attended  to  his 
affairs  industriously,  and  appeared  to  be  both  upright  and 
capable !  —  there  were  not  a  few  who,  in  the  presence  of 
their  womenkind  at  least,  avoided  the  young  man's  company. 
They  were  married  men,  fathers  of  families,  of  young  grow 
ing  girls  —  what  would  you  have?  The  domestic  peace  must 
be  kept  at  whatever  sacrifice  of  personal  prejudice  or  opinion. 
I  dare  say  Thomas,  Richard,  and  Henry  had  their  orders. 
And  what  if  Mr.  —  or  General  as  he  was  now  called,  for  he  got 
the  brevet  shortly  after  his  return  home  —  Burke,  was  dined 
by  Governor  Gwynne,  and  did  receive  a  vote  of  commen 
dation  from  the  Legislature,  and  the  gift  of  a  beautiful  sword, 
with  a  hilt  of  gold  and  mother  o'  pearl,  "appropriately  in 
scribed"?  Let  him  get  what  consolation  he  could  out  of  his 
military  laurels  —  that  didn't  make  a  respectable  man  of  him, 
Thomas.  Nor  a  fit  person  to  invite  to  our  house,  Richard. 
And  I  don't  care  whether  you  are  asked  to  the  banquet  and 


"HERE'S   SORRY  CHEER"  531 

the  presentation  or  not,  Henry,  you  shan't  go,  and  appear  to 
approve  of  that  man  —  would  you  like  to  have  our  little  Toms, 
Dicks,  and  Harrys  grow  up  to  be  like  him? 

Burke  being,  all  testimony  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
a  young  fellow  of  a  certain  solidity  of  character  and  very 
definite  aims  and  standards,  supported  his  ostracism  with 
out  bravado,  I  trust,  and  without  taking  to  strong  liquors  or 
other  reprehensible  courses.  In  truth,  Nat  was  used  to  lone 
liness,  as  regarded  feminine  society  at  any  rate.  Few  women 
had  ever  taken  any  interest  in  him,  and  he  told  himself  that 
if  they  could  do  without  him,  he  could  perfectly  well  do  with 
out  them.  The  grapes  were  very  sour,  I  suppose.  He  had 
indeed  some  champions  among  them;  for,  coming  out  of 
church  one  day  (the  hardened  libertine  actually  had  the  in 
solence  to  attend  service  quite  frequently!)  and  passing 
through  the  crowd  of  skirts  and  bonnets  as  rigorously  un 
noticed  as  if  he  had  owned  Prince  What's-his-name's  cloak 
of  invisibility,  Nat  found  himself  side  by  side  with  Miss  Clara 
Vardaman  —  Miss  Clara  looking  quintessential  spinsterhood 
in  her  neat,  thick,  handsome  silks  and  bugles,  her  lavender  kid 
gloves,  her  sable  muff,  the  gold  eyeglasses  on  her  slender, 
curving  nose.  "How  do  you  do,  Colonel  Burke?  Will  you 
give  me  your  arm  down  the  steps?  They're  quite  icy  this 
morning,"  says  Miss  Clara,  hardily,  though  with  the  color 
mounting  to  her  high  cheek-bones.  Before  the  shocked 
gaze  of  every  one  she  knew,  her  entire  little  world,  she 
walked  down  the  steps  of  Trinity  Church,  and  along  the  side 
walk,  clinging  to  his  arm  and  chatting  resolutely;  and  showed 
in  doing  it  —  you  will  pardon  me  for  thinking  —  a  real  cour 
age,  the  courage  of  a  great  lady  and  a  kind  heart. 

" Bravo,  Clara!"  said  the  doctor,  when  Burke,  smiling  a 
little  in  spite  of  himself,  described  this  incident  to  him;  "she'll 
have  to  stand  all  sorts  of  pecks  and  stings  from  the  women  for 
that,  you  know,  Nathan  —  dear  angels  that  they  are!"  said 
Jack,  somewhat  cynically;  his  own  love  affair  had  ended  as 
unfortunately  as  Burke's,  if  for  a  less  serious  cause.  "I 
have  another  loyal  friend  in  —  who  do  you  think?"  said  Nat, 
cheerfully;  "why,  Mrs.  Slaney,  to  be  sure!  She  says  she 
knows  —  nobody  better  —  that  men  will  be  men,  and  maybe 
I^got  tangled  up  somehow  like  Slaney  did  (I  always  have 
kind  of  reminded  her  of  Slaney,  he  was  just  that  sympathetic, 


532  NATHAN   BURKE 

and  kind  of  soft,  you  know,  with  women,  and  awfully  free 
with  his  money,  just  like  I  am!)  with  some  girl,  but  you  can't 
make  her  believe  it  was  all  my  fault.  They're  plenty  of 
sharp,  good-looking,  brazen  hussies  around  ready  to  get  hold 
of  a  man  like  me,  and  twist  him  'round  their  finger,"  said 
Burke,  ungratefully  imitating  Mrs.  Slaney's  voice  and  man 
ner,  to  Vardaman's  huge  amusement.  The  doctor  was  one  of 
Nathan's  few  confidants;  he  could  scarcely  have  talked  to 
Sharpless  —  all  circumstances  considered  —  so  openly. 

Jim,  arriving  the  week  after  his  friend,  and  after  the  wed 
ding  of  which  he  had  known  nothing,  came  around  to  the 
office  next  day,  with  a  face  of  great  perplexity,  distress,  and 
confusion.  "I  can't  say  much  to  you,  Nat,"  he  began 
abruptly;  "I  had  a  kind  of  uneasy  feeling  all  along.  Mother 
and  father  seem  to  have  counted  for  nothing  —  like  two  dum 
mies.  They're  both  old,  and  they're  too  —  too  used  to 
Mary,  you  know,  to  have  any  say.  Mother  feels  pretty  bad. 
She's  always  been  very  fond  of  you,  and  she's  beginning  to 
think  now  that  you  weren't  treated  right;  she  wanted  you  to 
come  to  the  house,  but,  of  course,  I  told  her  you  wouldn't 
do  that  —  it  made  her  feel  very  badly.  Women  don't  un 
derstand  somehow;  they  all  seem  to  think  you  can  knock 
down  Humpty  Dumpty  off  the  wall  and  pick  him  up  again  as 
whole  as  ever  —  spill  all  the  milk  and  scoop  it  up  again  — 
begin  just  where  you  left  off,  and  have  everything  the  same 
as  it  always  was!  Mother  feels  as  if  she  and  father  have  been 
partly  to  blame,  but  I  —  I  don't  think  they  could  have  helped 
it.  Mary  wouldn't  even  put  off  the  wedding  when  they 
heard  there  was  a  possibility  of  my  coming  home  —  her  only 
brother!  And  I  never  was  told  anything  about  it  —  the 
engagement  or  anything." 

"It's  all  right,  Jim,  old  fellow,  don't  say  anything  more. 
It's  only  what  I  might  have  expected  —  any  girl  would  have 
done  the  same.  You  see  what  everybody  —  all  her  friends  — 
think  of  me,"  said  Burke,  not  choosing  that  the  brother 
should  know  any  more  of  the  story.  And  whether  Jim  sus 
pected  anything  then  or  afterwards,  I  do  not  know,  for  we 
have  never  mentioned  the  subject  and  seldom  even  Mary's 
name,  from  that  day  to  this. 

The  two  had  really  not  much  chance  to  talk  in  private, 
during  these  days;  for  Sharpless  was  only  at  home  for  a  short 


"HERE'S   SORRY  CHEER"  533 

time  to  see  his  family  and  friends  and  say  his  good-bys. 
He  would  be  off  in  a  fortnight  for  St.  Louis,  Council  Bluffs, 
the  Overland  Trail  to  Oregon,  and  the  gold  diggings.  Not 
with  any  idea  of  making  his  fortune  —  Jim  appraised  his  own 
talents  and  disposition  too  justly  for  that,  and  no  such  illu 
sion  led  him  on.  A  certain  restlessness  possessed  him;  it 
had  taken  him  to  Mexico;  it  was  taking  him  to  California; 
it  took  him  through  later  life  to  known,  distant,  populous 
cities  and  equally  to  all  the  lost  and  forgotten  corners 
of  the  world.  We  never  knew  when  he  might  burst 
in  upon  our  humdrum  hearths,  bronzed  and  leathery, 
late  from  Alaska,  New  Zealand,  Cape  Horn  —  Heaven 
knows  where!  They  say  a  rolling  stone  gathers  no  moss, 
yet  I  am  sure  Sharpless  is  very  tenderly  enshrined  in  the 
hearts  of  his  friends,  and  particularly  of  his  friends'  young 
sters,  upon  whom  he  was  forever  bestowing  all  manner  of 
outlandish  gifts  picked  up  in  his  wanderings  —  sea-island 
ers'  feather-cloaks,  Egyptian  scarabs,  Hindoo  idols,  French 
dolls,  miniature  tea-sets  of  Japanese  lacquer,  Indian  bows-and 
arrows  —  toys  which  the  mothers  alternately  declared  too 
dangerous  or  too  beautiful  to  be  played  with.  You  may  see 
them  now  in  the  corner-cabinets  and  bric-a-brac  stands  of  a 
dozen  parlors.  I  have  heard  the  ladies  sigh  regretfully  that 
it  was  such  a  pity  Mr.  Sharpless  wouldn't  marry;  look  how 
fond  he  was  of  pretty  things  and  children.  He  was  really 
very  domestic,  for  all  he  would  travel  about  so  much  —  such 
a  pity!  He  used  to  make  barbarous  parodies  of  the  noble 
lines  in  "Ulysses,"  applying  them  to  himself:  — 

"  —  It  little  profits  that  with  busy  pen, 
Ink,  paper,  and  the  ever-needed  stamp, 
I  mete  and  dole  untruthful  words  unto 
A  set  of  savage  editors 

That  horde  and  sleep  and  feed  and  know  not  me. 
I  cannot  rest  from  travel  — 
There  lies  the  train ;  the  engine  puffs  her  steam ; 
There  glooms  the  dark,  broad  porter  of 
The  Pullman  car—" 

Jim  would  chant  sonorously,  and  double  up  with  icono 
clastic  laughter.  He  carried  his  bachelorhood  bravely,  and 
if  I  have  sometimes  surprised  a  look  of  wistfulness  or  loneli- 


534  NATHAN   BURKE 

ness  on  his  face  at  sight  of  some  young  mother  with  her  baby, 
the  child  —  Good  Lord,  the  grandchild,  nowadays!  —  of  an 
acquaintance,  it  always  passed  quickly.  We  gave  him  a  din 
ner,  too,  and  presented  him  with  a  handsome  gold-mounted 
shaving-set  in  a  travelling-case,  upon  the  occasion  of  this 
first  departure;  and  all  the  papers,  Whig  and  Democrat, 
described  the  ceremonies  the  next  day,  in  articles  a  column 
long  with  many  references  to  "our  talented  fellow-towns 
man."  The  public  had  generously  forgotten  or  forgiven  his 
heresies ;  and  hardly  anybody  to-day  would  understand 
what  the  term  meant  as  applied  to  his  opinions. 

All  this  while,  in  defiance  of  all  the  laws  of  retribution,  the 
firm  of  Burke  and  Lewis  prospered  amazingly,  undeterred  by 
the  return  of  the  senior  partner  with  his  evil  thick  upon  him. 
Young  Lewis,  whether  he  believed  the  gossip  or  not,  did  not 
allow  it  to  disturb  his  own  peace,  nor  his  relations  with  the 
hero  of  it.  He  was  a  shrewd  young  fellow,  with  a  good  gift 
at  estimating  men's  characters,  as  a  pleader  of  no  startling 
eloquence  perhaps,  but  forcible,  honest,  humorous,  and  ready. 
It  was  remarked  of  the  firm  that  one  man  uniting  the  special 
and  separate  qualities  of  its  two  members  would  have  been  a 
great  lawyer;  as  it  was,  I  suppose  they  were  merely  a  notably 
strong  alliance.  It  lasted  for  nearly  thirty  years,  only  dis 
solving  when  Lewis  went  on  the  Bench  in  1875.  One  of  the 
first  visitors  to  the  office  after  Burke's  return  was  his  ancient 
patron,  Mr.  Marsh.  Nat,  having  heard  on  all  sides  that  old 
George  was  failing  fast,  was  very  feeble,  was  growing  childish, 
and  so  on,  was  agreeably  surprised  when  he  stumped  in,  ap 
parently  vigorous  as  ever,  with  eyes  and  hearing  as  keen  as  in 
the  days  of  their  first  acquaintance,  and  with  what  looked 
like  the  same  shabby  tail-coat  on  his  back,  and  the  same 
grease-stains  and  dabs  of  tobacco  in  the  creases  of  his  waist 
coat.  His  manner,  however,  was  much  more  cordial  than 
used  to  be  natural  with  him,  and  he  presently  displayed  a 
certain  eagerness  and  volubility  and  disposition  to  talk  about 
himself,  which  Burke  was  obliged  to  acknowledge  inwardly, 
not  without  reluctance,  to  be  a  sign  of  the  creeping  years. 

"I  can't  stay  very  long  —  that  is,  I  won't  stay  very  long," 
he  announced,  after  the  greetings  were  over;  "I  never  did 
like  people  idling  around  an  office.  And  then  I  have  business 
of  my  own  to  attend  to.  People  think  because  a  man's 


"  HERE'S  SORRY  CHEER"         535 

retired,  he  hasn't  got  anything  to  do.  Well,  that's  a  mistake; 
there's  something  for  me  to  do,  anyhow,  I  take  notice,  all  the 
time.  Now,  where  I  board,  there's  a  man  setting  a  new  grate 
in  the  back-parlor  mantelpiece  —  got  to  tear  out  the  bricks 
and  set  the  grate  all  over  on  account  of  its  smoking  —  and 
I've  got  to  go  back  directly  and  keep  an  eye  on  that  job. 
Don't  make  any  difference  how  good  a  workman  is,  he'll 
bear  watching  —  that's  my  principle.  It's  an  exceptional 
man,  anyway,  that  don't  need  a  little  watching,  hey?  I 
guess  you  remember  me  telling  you  that  when  you  was  keep 
ing  the  books,  hey?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,  Mr.  Marsh,"  said  Nathan,  amused. 
"I  remember  your  telling  me  that  responsibility  was  good  for 
almost  everybody,  and  that  people  ought  to  be  left  to  their 
own  devices  sometimes,  anyhow,  if  only  to  see  what  kind  of  an 
out  they  made  of  it." 

"Well,  you  see  you  were  always  a  tolerably  steady  boy,  or 
I  wouldn't  have  talked  that  way  to  you.  That's  what  I  tell 
Anne.  'He's  always  been  a  steady  young  fellow,'  says  I, 
'and  I  doubt  very  much  if  all  these  stories  we  hear  about- 
turn  are  true  —  wouldn't  wonder  if  they  were  cut  out  of 
whole  cloth.  But  even  if  they  were  true,  Lord  love  you,' 
says  I,  '  if  every  young  man  that's  behaved  that  way  has  got 
to  go  to  hell  for  it,  why,  it's  going  to  be  mighty  lonesome  in 
heaven!'  However,"  added  the  old  gentleman,  philo 
sophically,  "there  ain't  much  use  arguing  with  Anne  when 
she's  got  her  back  up.  You  know  that.  Don't  make  much 
odds  what  I  say,  she  always  winds  up  with,  'Why,  Uncle 
George,  Georgie  wrote  us  all  about  it  exactly  as  it  happened. 
He  saw  it  all  with  his  own  eyes.'  'Huh!'  I  says,  'since 
when  did  George  set  out  to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and 
nothing  but  the  truth  ?  It's  been  my  observation  he  can  lie 
like  a  missionary.  And,  anyhow,  what  did  he  see  ?  By  damn, 
I'd  have  liked  to  been  there,  and  seen  it,  too !  'Tain't  the 
kind  of  thing  that's  generally  on  view,' "said  old  George,  con 
cluding  this  exposition  of  his  sentiments  with  a  dreadfully 
significant  wink  and  grin.  "'Hm!'  says  Anne  —  you 
know  how  Anne  says  '  Hm ! '  Nathan,  —  and  then  told 
Francie  to  go  out  of  the  room,  because  she'd  rather  she  didn't 
hear  how  her  Uncle  George  talks  !  What's  become  of  George, 
anyhow,  do  you  know  ?" 


536  NATHAN   BURKE 

Burke  told  him  all  he  knew,  but  the  other  listened  with  a 
wandering  attention,  and  before  the  young  man  had  well 
finished,  began  to  talk.  "  Got  off  at  St.  Louis,  hey  ?  Maybe 
Anne'll  hear  from  him,  then,  as  long  as  he's  in  this  country. 
She  hasn't  had  any  word  since  you  started  from  Mexico,  I 
believe.  She  made  me  promise  to  ask  you.  I  wanted  to 
know  why  she  didn't  have  you  come  up  to  the  house  and  tell 
her  all  about  him  yourself,  but  she  nearly  went  into  screech 
ing  hysterics  at  the  notion,  and  Francie  begun  to  cry,  and 
there  was  an  infernal  howdy-do.  Made  me  pretty  mad. 
'By  damn,  ma'am/  I  said  to  her;  'if  Burke's  good  enough 
to  take  care  of  your  son,  he's  good  enough  to  have  in  your 
house.  George  may  be  a  moral  young  man,  but  I  ain't  heard 
of  his  getting  any  promotion,  and  a  sword  from  the  com 
munity  yet.  Point  of  fact,  I  ain't  heard  of  his  doing  any 
thing,  except  get  lost  and  found,  and  I  take  notice  nobody's 
explained  those  circumstances.'  How  was  that,  Nathan? 
You  ought  to  know." 

"  Why,  that's  about  all  there  is  to  know,"  said  Burke,  and 
gave  him  an  outline  of  George's  story,  omitting  to  mention, 
however,  the  society  and  conditions  wherein  Lieutenant 
Ducey  had  recovered  his  liberty.  "No  use  going  into  that 
miserable  detail,"  he  thought. 

"Well,  maybe  it's  so  and  maybe  'tain't,"  said  Mr.  Marsh, 
impartially,  at  the  end.  "Can't  relie  on  George.  I  thought 
likely  he'd  run  away,  deserted,  you  know,  when  I  first  heard 
it.  Poor  Anne !  Pretty  hard  on  a  woman,  having  her  only  son 
turn  out  like  George  —  pretty  hard.  She  has  a  kind  of  an  idea 
he  ain't  any  good,  but  she  won't  acknowledge  it  to  herself. 
She  keeps  talking  about  him  being  just  a  young  boy,  and  his 
character  ain't  formed  yet.  But  he'll  never  be  any  different, 
Nathan;  I've  seen  George's  kind  before.  Queer  thing  is 
somebody's  always  taking  care  of  'em,  and  helping  'em 
out,  and  worrying  over  'em;  their  parents  or  kin  or  some 
body." 

"Well,  it's  very  natural  for  Mrs.  Ducey  — 

"Oh,  yes,  Anne's  all  the  time  worrying  around  about  some 
body  or  something,  anyhow.  Every  now  and  then  she  gets 
a  spell  of  wanting  to  take  care  of  me.  And,  damn  it,  Nathan, 
I  don't  want  to  be  taken  care  of,"  said  the  old  man,  irritably. 
"Can't  make  her  understand  that,  somehow.  I  haven't  got 


"HERE'S   SORRY  CHEER"  537 

into  my  dotage  yet,  I  guess.  I  can  take  care  of  myself; 
ain't  as  young  as  I  was,  of  course,  but  I  don't  see  any  men 
of  my  age  around  that  are  any  better  preserved,  now,  —  do 
you?" 

Nat  could  and  did  assent  to  that  with  a  clear  conscience; 
for,  in  fact,  there  were  few,  if  any,  citizens  of  George  Marsh's 
age  in  the  place.  "You  don't  look  a  day  older  to  me,  sir," 
he  said  —  and  it  was  quite  true. 

"I've got  just  as  clear  a  head  for  business  as  I  ever  had  in 
my  life,"  pursued  the  veteran;  "I  drew  out  just  because  I 
wanted  to.  But  I  ain't  on  the  shelf,  by  any  means,  Burke. 
I  could  get  right  back  to  work  to-morrow,  if  I  had  to  —  if  I 
lost  my  money,  for  instance.  Not  that  I'm  afraid  of  that; 
I've  got  it  where  it's  safe,  I  guess.  Landed  property  and 
ground-rents  don't  run  away.  I  didn't  leave  but  a  little  with 
Ducey,  you  know.  Between  you  and  me,  Nathan,  Ducey 
hasn't  got  any  gumption  —  he  ain't  smart.  I'll  bet  he's 
running  behind  right  along,  and  has  been  ever  since  he's  been 
by  himself  at  the  store,  and  probably  don't  know  it,  or  don't 
know  why,  anyway.  It'll  be  just  like  it  was  that  time  down 
in  New  Orleans  twenty-five  years  ago,  when  they  all  got  out 
and  came  up  here.  William  had  got  through  everything. 
William  thinks  now  he's  going  to  make  a  big  thing  out  of 
these  government  contracts  —  for  feeding  the  army,  you 
know — same  way  I  did  back  in  1812.  'Look  here,  now, 
you  want  to  go  slow,'  I  told  him  the  other  day.  '  First 
thing  you  know  the  war'll  be  over,  and  that'll  leave  you  with 
the  bag  to  hold.  Don't  stock  up  too  much;  don't  have  too 
much  on  hand,  or  too  much  ordered.  It's  easy  enough  to 
get  flour  and  bacon,  without  loading  up  with  'em.'  No  use 
talking;  he  thinks  the  war's  going  to  last  forever.  Thinks 
we're  going  to  keep  on  till  we've  conquered  Mexico." 

"I  hope  not!"  said  Burke,  seriously;  he  meant  it. 

"Yes.  I  notice  anybody  that's  seen  war  once,  the  way  you 
have,  has  about  got  his  bellyfull.  But  if  Ducey  don't  bust 
himself  that  way,  he  will  some  other  way,"  said  Mr.  Marsh, 
with  a  curious  indifference.  "I've known  a  lot  of  men  got 
busted  doing  the  very  things  I  did,  only  they  didn't  know 
how.  Why,  they  tell  me  now  there's  a  big  whillabaloo  being 
raised  over  land-titles  —  property  all  around  here  in  the  old 
Refugee  Tract,  and  right  next  door  to  where  I  bought. 


538  NATHAN   BURKE 

People  named  Allen,  claiming  to  be  the  heirs  of  an  Allen  that 
the  United  States  gave  some  land  to  back  in  the  Revolution 
time  —  a  British  refugee  from  Canada,  I  believe.  I  remember 
when  that  land  came  on  the  market  at  sheriff's  sale  —  I've 
told  you  about  it.  You  could  buy  it  for  nothing  almost  — 
and  look  at  the  value  of  it  now !  But  these  Aliens  are  making 
out  that  the  sale  made  a  cloud  on  the  title  somehow,  and  I 
understand  they've  brought  suit  against  all  the  owners  — 
the  ones  that  have  the  most  valuable  improvements,  anyhow. 
Now  you  know  I  bought  right  at  that  time,  and  same  place  — 
the  Refugee  Tract;  and  I  was  a  little  anxious  at  first  when  I 
heard  about  the  suit.  'I'll  be  the  next  one/  thinks  I.  But 
I've  never  heard  a  word  out  of  any  of  'em,  or  anybody  else, 
and  it's  been  a  year  now  since  the  shindy  began.  Nobody's 
sueing  me.  I  got  out  my  old  deeds  and  looked  'em  over,  and 
by  damn,  Nathan,  I  didn't  buy  any  of  Allen's  land!  I  don't 
remember  the  circumstances  now,  but  I  must  have  had  my 
suspicions  at  the  time.  My  titles  all  come  from  a  fellow  by 
the  name  of  Granger.  People  will  tell  you  that's  just  old 
George  Marsh's  luck.  They  don't  allow  for  old  George 
Marsh's  common  sense." 

"  That's  so,"  said  Nathan. 

"I  don't  deny  it's  given  me  some  worry,  Burke.  This 
Granger  now  —  it's  funny  there  ain't  any  of  his  children 
turned  up.  All  the  land  was  in  what  we  used  to  call  Mc- 
Bride's  Half-section,  because  McBride  was  one  of  the  original 
proprietors,  one  of  the  fellows  that  bid  for  the  site  of  the  town, 
you  know;  and  afterwards  the  speculation  busted  him,  and 
the  sheriff  sold  him  out.  He  didn't  buy  of  Granger  exactly, 
either;  as  near  as  I  can  make  out  from  the  papers  he  bought 
of  an  agent  acting  for  Granger.  Would  that  make  any  dif 
ference  in  my  titles,  Nathan?" 

"Well,  I  —  I'd  have  to  see  the  papers  before  I  could  say. 
But  I  don't  believe  you'll  ever  hear  from  any  of  Granger's 
descendants  if  they  haven't  begun  on  you  by  this  time," 
said  Burke,  concerned  at  his  old  friend's  evident  uneasiness. 
"It  would  take  a  great  deal  of  time  and  trouble  and  money 
for  them  to  prove  a  claim,  anyhow." 

"Yes,  I  know  that  —  that's  one  of  the  things  that's  worry 
ing  me,"  said  old  George,  with  impatience.  "  If  anything  got 
started  now,  why,  it  would  be  sure  to  last  me  out,  and  at  my 


"HERE'S   SORRY  CHEER »  539 

death  my  property  would  pretty  near  all  be  tied  up  in  a  law 
suit.  How'd  poor  Walter's  children  make  out  with  a  law 
suit  ?  They're  all  women,  and  they  haven't  got  any  too  much 
sense,  anyhow.  I  guess  I'll  bring  all  my  deeds  down  and  have 
you  look  'em  over.  You  see,  Nathan,"  he  went  on,  almost 
apologetically,  "  everybody  was  careless  about  forms,  you 
know,  in  the  old  days.  We  —  well,  we  were  just  careless  —  I 
can  see  it  now.  Just  for  a  sample :  I  understand  these  Allen 
people  take  the  ground  that  there  wasn't  any  appraisement  of 
the  lots  made,  and  notice  given  properly  —  legally,  you  know, 
before  the  sale.  Gilbert  Gwynne  was  talking  about  that  the 
other  day,  and  presently  he  turned  around  to  me  and  says : 
'Why,  here's  somebody  ought  to  know.  Mr.  Marsh,  you 
were  there  at  the  time,  weren't  you  ?  You  remember  those 
lots  were  all  appraised  regularly  ? '  The  governor  owns  some 
of  that  Refugee  Tract  land,  too,  you  know.  But  I  just  had  to 
own  up;  I  had  to  say  to  him:  'Gil/  says  I,  'I'll  be  damned 
if  I  remember  a  thing  about  it  !  They  put  'em  up  at 
auction  two  or  three  times,  and  when  we  got  good  and  ready, 
we  all  went  in  and  bought,  and  that's  every  'last  thing  I 
know!'  It  ought  to  be  a  matter  of  record,  but  I  doubt  if 
anybody  has  the  scratch  of  a  pen  to  show  for  it." 

He  went  on  talking  in  this  strain  for  some  time,  by  turns 
vaunting  his  shrewdness,  explaining  his  anxieties,  and  calling 
on  Burke  for  reassurance  in  a  manner  which  betrayed  a  sad 
falling  off.  It  was  not  entirely  just,  Burke  thought,  to  call 
him  childish,  or  even  greatly  failed;  the  strength  of  his 
character  endured  and  showed  by  flashes  still;  but  certainly 
he  was  no  longer  the  hard,  resolute,  and  self-confident  man  of 
a  few  years  back.  Burke  found  something  namelessly  de 
pressing  in  the  old  fellow's  softened  ways  towards  himself,  the 
warmth  of  his  compliments,  his  proud  assertions  that  he  had 
seen  there  was  "something  in"  his  protege  from  the  first.  In 
the  old  days  Mr.  Marsh  would  as  soon  have  thought  of  giving 
Nat  a  stick  of  candy  as  of  flattering  or  even  commending  him  ; 
it  was  enough  for  him  to  approve.  He  used  at  times  to  talk 
very  freely  to  the  young  man  about  his  affairs  and  experiences, 
but  his  talk  was  always  clear-headed,  apt  to  the  moment, 
profitable.  Now  he  would  run  on  endlessly,  prompted  by 
nothing  but  the  desire  for  companionship  and  sympathy, 
asking  for  the  other's  opinion,  pleased  at  his  interest  — 


540  NATHAN   BURKE 

which,  Heaven  forgive  us,  was  often  enough  feigned,  and  very 
poorly  feigned  at  that !  It  was  touching.  For,  as  time  went 
on,  old  George's  visits  to  the  office  increased  in  length  and 
frequency;  I  think  he  had  nowhere  else  to  go,  and  it  was  the 
event  of  the  day  for  him. 

He  invariably  began  by  expressing  his  intention  of  staying 
only  a  short  while  —  nobody  ought  to  set  foot  in  any  man's 
office  but  the  people  who  had  business  there  —  he  knew  that 
—  he  just  thought  he'd  look  in  for  a  minute  —  he  was  busy 
at  home,  anyhow.  And  he  never  went  away  without  men 
tioning  the  papers  which  he  meant  to  bring  down  for  Nathan 
to  examine  —  he  didn't  believe  there  was  anything  the  mat 
ter  with  them  —  guess  it  would  take  a  smart  man  to  find  a 
flaw  in  his  titles,  old  George  Marsh's  titles  —  still,  it  would 
make  him  a  little  easier  —  he  would  bring  them  the  next  day. 
The  next  day  came,  and  he  had  forgot  them,  by  damn !  But 
whether  he  really  did  forget  them,  or  kept  up  this  ingenious 
fiction  to  persuade  himself  that  he  had  business  at  the  office, 
it  would  be  hard  to  say.  He  had  a  stout  hickory  chair  in  a 
corner,  and  would  sit  there  a  whole  morning,  silent  when 
clients  came  in  or  the  place  was  busy  —  for  he  had  most 
rigorous  ideas  about  office  discipline  —  quite  talkative, 
jocose,  and  reminiscent  at  other  times  with  Burke,  with 
Lewis,  —  who  was  always  patience  and  good-humor  itself,  — 
with  our  increasing  squad  of  clerks  —  the  lads  were  generally 
kind-hearted  and  civil  enough,  even  if  they  did  grin  at  each 
other  behind  his  back.  I  have  heard  Mr.  Marsh  pitching 
them  some  extraordinary  tale  of  my  own  parts  and  prowess 
when  I  was  such  as  they  —  "  Fifteen  years  I've  known  him, 
boys,  fifteen  years.  I  guess  I've  had  plenty  of  time  and 
chances  to  find  out  what  kind  he  is.  You'd  get  a  pretty 
good  line  on  a  rascal  in  that  time,  hey  ?  I've  seen  the  world," 
he  would  observe  somewhat  ambiguously ;  and  our  Jacks  and 
Jimmies  would  bolt  incontinently  into  the  outer  hall,  where 
we  could  hear  their  youthful  guffawing.  It  was  not  a  pic 
turesque  or  stately  decline;  but  I  cannot  in  honesty  dress  it 
up  or  report  it  otherwise  than  as  it  was.  If  we  could  but 
choose  the  manner  of  our  exit,  and  know  when  to  expect  the 
cue,  what  a  grand  business  should  we  all  make  of  it !  But  it  is 
not  a  handsome  thing  to  be  old  and  tired  and  near  our  end; 
and  whatever  of  sad  or  shabby  was  to  be  seen  in  old  George 


"HERE'S   SORRY  CHEER"  541 

Marsh  will  probably  be  seen  in  you  and  me.  God  be  with 
him,  honest  old  pagan !  —  although  I  must  think  he  would 
be  somewhat  ill  at  ease  in  any  sort  of  spiritual  company;  and 
like  better,  indeed,  to  believe  him  sleeping  alone  and  sound 
and  dreamlessly  under  the  green  turf. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

IN   WHICH   MR.    BUEKE   RECEIVES  AND   MAKES   VlSITS 

BURKE,  not  having  made  any  effort  to  "live  down"  the 
memory  of  the  fault  which  he  had  not  committed,  and  having 
made  no  change  in  his  habits  and  way  of  life,  was  surprised 
and  a  little  sardonically  amused  to  find  himself,  after  twelve 
months  or  so  had  gone  by,  gradually  emerging,  as  it  were, 
from  the  cloud  of  obloquy  —  undergoing  rehabilitation. 
People  get  used  to  everything,  and  Nat,  who  was  not  par 
ticularly  observant,  and  had  accepted  his  isolation  without 
protest,  woke  up  with  a  start  one  day  to  the  fact  that  he  was 
being  looked  at,  and  in  some  cases  bowed  to,  officially  and 
publicly  recognized  —  albeit  rather  stiffly  and  self-con 
sciously  —  by  a  number  of  those  amiable  beings  without 
whose  influence  society  would  be  a  mere  mess  of  corruption. 
I  do  not  know  what  forces  were  at  work :  perhaps  the  ladies 
were  tired  of  the  game;  perhaps  they  discerned  a  chance  to 
reform  him;  perhaps  there  was  a  growing  opinion  that  he 
had  been  punished  enough,  and  a  desire  to  gather  up  the 
spilled  milk,  as  Jim  would  have  suggested.  The  poor  wretch 
bore  no  malice;  it  is  only  women  who  feel  a  righteous  enmity 
towards  those  who  are  in  the  wrong,  and  who  will  hate  you 
sturdily  for  a  difference  of  belief.  He  humbly  and  grate 
fully  took  off  his  hat  to  these  signs  —  not  of  returning  favor, 
he  had  not  the  conceit  to  think  that  —  of  reestablished 
tolerance.  All  the  husbands  had  long  since  relented,  for 
convenience'  sake,  if  from  no  kinder  motive;  and  when 
William  Ducey  appeared  at  the  office  one  fine  morning, 
Burke  might  have  known,  if  he  had  troubled  his  head  about 
it  at  all,  that  the  last  of  the  barriers  was  down. 

For,  of  all  his  judges,  Mrs.  Anne  Ducey  was  the  hardest 
and  most  implacable,  as  Nathan  had  observed  with  a  sort 
of  good-tempered  and  patient  irony.  He  would  have 
guessed  it,  even  without  old  Mr.  Marsh's  reports.  She  could 
not  forgive  him  for  having  laid  her  under  certain  obligations 

542 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES  AND   MAKES   VISITS     543 

—  for,  even  if  she  did  not  know  the  exact  extent  of  them, 
what  she  did  know  irked  her  pride.  And  again:  whatever 
kind  of  man  Burke  had  proved  morally,  he  was  at  least 
moderately  clever,  strong,  successful  —  was  her  George 
any  of  these  things  ?  She  visited  her  disappointment  on 
Burke's  head,  with  a  bitterness  increased,  it  may  be,  by  a 
consciousness  of  injustice;  for  Anne  was  an  upright  woman. 
But  what  mother's  heart  was  ever  governed  by  her  head  ? 
I  have  lived  a  good  while  and  made  enemies  in  my  time, 
and  some  friends,  I  hope,  and  have  felt  an  enmity  or  friend 
ship  for  others,  and  I  will  say  flat  that  I  never  saw  a  like  or 
dislike  that  was  wholly  logical;  and  if  Mrs.  Ducey's  attitude 
seems  unworthy  or  incomprehensible,  it  is  because  it  was  so 
simple  and  so  natural.  Undoubtedly  it  gave  her  a  solid  if 
unacknowledged  satisfaction  when  Sin  found  out  the  hitherto 
reputable  Mr.  Burke,  and  judgment  overtook  him.  Such 
an  event  always  pleases  everybody.  The  just  man  falls 
seven  times  —  and  how  the  world  does  love  to  see  him  fall  ! 
So,  then,  nobody  so  rigid  as  Mrs.  Anne  in  punishment, 
nobody  so  consistent.  She  would  cross  the  street  if  she  saw 
the  culprit  coming  ever  so  far  away;  she  would  get  up  and 
leave  her  own  front  porch,  she  would  turn  her  back  in  the 
yard  when  Burke  passed.  She  made  William  avoid  him 
like  a  pestilence;  she  had  battles  royal  with  her  uncle  on  the 
subject  of  his  inveterate  regard  for  the  young  man,  his  fre 
quenting  of  Burke's  precincts.  The  old  fellow  used  to  detail 
them,  grinning  satanically.  I  believe  the  desire  to  plague 
Anne  strengthened  and  confirmed  his  attachment.  "She 
leads  Francie  a  dickens  of  a  life  on  your  account,  Nat,"  he 
once  said;  " Francie's  got  plenty  of  spunk,  you  know,  in  spite 
of  her  being  such  a  quiet  little  thing,  and  she  always  has  stood 
up  for  you.  When  that  first  letter  of  George's  came,  there 
was  a  flare-up,  I  tell  you !  Francie  said  there  wasn't  a  word 
of  truth  in  the  whole  story,  George  never  told  the  truth,  any 
how;  she  was  sure  he  was  just  mad  at  you  because  you 
wouldn't  lend  him  money,  or  help  get  him  out  of  some  scrape. 
.Then  Anne  got  up  on  her  ear,  and  called  her  a  wicked,  un 
grateful,  slanderous  girl  without  any  affection  for  her  own 
kin  —  as  if  that  was  an  argument!  They  had  it  hot  and 
heavy,  and  then  ended  the  way  women  do,  you  know,  by 
bursting  out  crying  and  bawling,  and  making  up  and  each 


544  NATHAN   BURKE 

one  calling  herself  names  for  being  so  hateful  to  the  other. 
If  either  William  or  I  interferes  to  make  peace,  damned  if  they 
don't  both  of  'em  light  into  us!  They're  really  very  fond  of 
each  other;  Anne's  about  the  only  mother  Francie's  ever 
known.  And  they're  both  mighty  good  women,  Burke  — 
the  salt  of  the  earth,  both  of  'em.  But  they  can't  make  up 
their  minds  to  let  each  other  alone,  and  each  one  think  her 
own  way  about  you.  Every  time  your  name's  mentioned 
there's  the  same  old  row." 

Nat  listened  amazed  and  rather  troubled.  He  had  sup 
posed  that  Francie  thought  about  him,  as  every  one  else; 
she  had  always  been  a  submissive  child,  never  disobeying 
and  rarely  even  contradicting  her  elders.  But  she  was  also 
loyal  and  steadfast  in  her  affection,  as  he  knew;  a  little  girl 
she  had  liked  him,  and  it  warmed  his  lonesome  heart  to  think 
that  she  liked  him  still,  or  anyhow  believed  in  him,  in  spite 
of  everything,  in  defiance  of  everybody.  He  had  seen  her 
at  a  distance  twice  since  his  return;  and  once  came  face  to 
face  with  her  at  the  door  of  a  shop,  just  as  she  was  leaving 
with  an  armful  of  small  bundles;  the  Ducey  carriage,  which 
was  very  splendid  with  polished  surfaces,  and  shining,  silver- 
plated  chains  and  buckles,  and  a  pair  of  champing  black 
horses,  stood  at  the  curb.  Francie  dropped  all  her  bundles 
with  a  start ;  her  sweet  little  face  turned  quite  gray.  Nathan 
bowed  soberly,  and  stooped  down  and  picked  up  the  pack 
ages  and  restored  them  to  her  —  what  else  should  he  have 
done?  "Th-thank  you — "  said  Francie,  in  a  fluttering 
voice,  and,  scarlet  now,  with  trembling  lips,  she  went  across 
the  sidewalk  to  where  her  aunt  was  sitting  in  the  carriage, 
erect,  forbidding,  watchful.  Mrs.  Ducey  took  the  things, 
fingering  them  fastidiously. 

"What  did  that  —  that  person  say  to  you,  Francie;  tell 
me  this  minute!"  Burke  heard  her  ask  sharply;  indeed  she 
raised  her  voice  rather  than  lowered  it  for  this  somewhat 
personal  remark,  carefully  looking  around,  over,  through, 
and  beyond  the  young  man. 

"He  didn't  say  anything,"  stammered  the  girl,  hes 
itating  between  them;  and  Burke,  to  relieve  her,  and 
perhaps  also  to  hide  his  own  loss  of  countenance,  strode 
off.  He  would  not  have  thought  it  possible  for  so  trifling 
a  thing  to  make  him  so  angry.  All  the  slights  and  petty 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES   AND  MAKES   VISITS     545 

cruelties  he  had  endured  were  as  nothing  beside  the  secure 
feminine  insolence  and  brutality  of  Mrs.  Ducey's  voice 
and  manner ;  he  was  down  and  she  struck  him  —  they 
all  struck  him.  If  their  miserable  weapons  had  been  real 
slings  and  arrows,  he  was  a  man  and  could  not  revenge  him 
self  upon  these  weak  creatures.  "  Francie  would  have  spoken 
to  me,  if  she  had  been  by  herself,"  he  thought;  " she  couldn't 
have  been  contaminated  by  it.  She  used  to  like  me.  I 
wouldn't  have  taken  advantage  of  her  kindness  or  her  inex 
perience;  I  wouldn't  have  presumed  on  it.  I  wouldn't 
even  have  let  her  say  more  than  a  how-d'ye-do  for  fear  of 
giving  some  of  these  elderly  cats  some  cause  to  gossip  about 
her.  They  might  give  me  credit  for  that  much  decency. 
Why,  if  I  were  as  bad  as  they  make  out,  they  might  know  I 
still  would  respect  a  pure  young  girl  like  Francie."  Sore 
and  sick  at  heart  was  poor  Nat;  all  the  cynical  philosophy 
he  summoned  up  could  not  soothe  him,  and  if  virtue  is 
its  own  reward,  he  found  that  a  very  poor  and  unsatisfactory 
one. 

Hearing  these  words  of  old  George's,  however,  a  kind  of 
shamefaced  gratification  rose  within  him.  "It's  a  pity  if 
they  can't  find  something  better  worth  while  than  me  to 
quarrel  over,"  he  said,  but  I  think  there  was  a  little  false 
humility,  in  that  speech.  Francie  was  his  friend  after  all 
—  she  still  liked  him  —  the  only  woman  who  dared.  He 
didn't  count  poor  Mrs.  Slaney;  he  had  always  been  liked 
and  somewhat  feared  and  looked  up  to  by  chambermaids, 
laundresses,  charwomen,  the  Mrs.  Slaneys  of  all  conditions 
and  shades  of  rank.  And  to  be  sure  there  was  Miss  Varda- 
man;  but  she  was,  of  course,  influenced  by  Jack,  and,  too, 
she  had  reached  an  age  when  she  might  conduct  herself  as 
she  thought  proper  and  display  a  liking  for  any  man  she 
chose,  without  arousing  comment,  and  —  and  —  And, 
in  short,  if  Francie  had  been  forty-five,  with  crows'  feet  and 
a  pinch  under  her  chin,  I  doubt  if  Mr.  Nat  would  have  found 
it  so  peculiarly  pleasing  to  be  championed  by  her.  There  is 
a  difference;  the  girl  risked  more,  according  to  a  woman's 
code;  it  took  more  character.  For  the  idea  of  anybody 
making  loose  advances  to  a  spinster  of  Miss  Clara's  type, 
or  of  her  name  being  dragged  into  a  scandalous  association, 
was  so  fantastically  ludicrous  it  might  make  even  the  women 

2N 


546  NATHAN   BURKE 

laugh.  Burke  absently  shuffled  the  papers  on  his  desk; 
Francie  must  be  about  twenty-one  —  or  twenty-two  at 
most;  she  had  a  nice,  round  little  figure  —  she  had  been 
rather  dumpy  and  awkward  at  fifteen  when  she  first  put 
on  long  dresses  —  and  a  very  pretty  complexion,  and  dimples 
-he  paused,  recalling  her  dimples;  heigh-ho!  Burke  him 
self  was  eight  or  nine  years  older  and  getting  as  gray  as  a 
badger,  and  was  done  forever  with  girls,  women,  the  domes 
ticities.  And,  in  fact,  he  was  doing  nothing  at  all,  sitting 
staring  out  of  the  window,  when  Lewis  came  in  with  the  brief 
in  the  suit  of  Porter  vs.  Brinkerhoff  for  alleged  defamation  of 
character,  and  he  turned  with  a  sigh  to  the  consideration  of 
other  people's  troubles. 

It  was  months  after  these  episodes,  and  public  opinion  had 
been  for  some  time  undergoing  the  change  and  softening 
hinted  at  in  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  when,  for  a  kind  of 
climax  to  the  process,  Mr.  Ducey  came  in,  figuratively  ex 
tending  the  olive-branch.  William  had  got  a  shade  fatter 
of  late  years,  but  his  pallid  complexion  was  unaltered,  his 
hair  as  black,  abundant,  and  abundantly  oiled  as  ever,  falling 
in  the  same  rich  abandon  to  his  coat-collar;  he  was  just  as 
fond  of  fancy  waistcoats,  and  looked  as  trim  and  as  unosten 
tatiously  elegant  as  in  the  old  days;  and  his  manner  showed 
the  same  gracious  —  and  I  am  sure,  kindly  meant  —  patron 
age.  No  one  would  have  supposed  that  times  were  at  all 
changed  with  either  of  them,  since  the  day  Burke  left  the 
Ducey  stable  to  serve  under  old  George  Marsh.  For  a 
flash  Nat  saw  himself,  a  gawky  hobbledehoy  of  seventeen  or 
so,  in  his  ill-fitting  Sunday  clothes,  his  squeaking  boots, 
diffident,  anxious,  hopeful,  mounting  the  office-stool;  he 
had  cut  his  initials  with  a  jack-knife  on  its  hollowing  seat, 
which  had  acquired  a  mirrorlike  polish,  something  akin  to 
that  which  erelong  decorated  the  corresponding  surface  of 
young  Burke's  pantaloons;  he  was  only  a  boy,  after  all. 
He  wondered  if  the  initials  were  there  still.  He  could  smell 
again  the  hemp  and  coffee  in  the  cellar;  he  had  an  instant 
vision  of  Mr.  Marsh  with  the  market-report  on  his  knee, 
his  eyebrows  knotted  over  his  dingy  note-book  and  stub  of 
pencil;  of  Mr.  Ducey  yawning  furtively  among  his  eternal 
memoranda.  Now  here  was  William  delivering  cordial 
and  flattering  commonplaces  about  his  ex-clerk's  achieve- 


MR.   BURKE  RECEIVES   AND  MAKES   VISITS    547 

ments  and  abilities,  about  his  office  and  his  practice  and 
everything  that  was  his,  exactly  as  if  he  had  not  deliberately 
ignored  and  cold-shouldered  the  young  man  for  more  than 
a  year! 

Business  was  dull,  very  dull,  according  to  Mr.  Ducey; 
it  generally  was  so  immediately  after  a  presidential  cam 
paign  year;  and,  in  fact,  during,  and  he  might  say,  before  a 
presidential  campaign  year.  You  had  no  sooner  recovered 
from  th  —  ah  —  the  depression  incident  to  one,  than  the 
next  one  —  er  —  set  in,  as  you  might  say.  He  thought  it 
was  getting  worse  and  worse.  He  had  thought  it  might 
be  owing  more  or  less,  you  understand  more  or  less,  to  the 
present  or  the  recent  policy  of  the  government,  and  to  its 
future  intentions.  Now,  for  instance,  this  buying  of  all  that 
territory  in  the  southwest  from  Mexico,  after  we  had  over 
run  and  practically  taken  it  vi  et  armis  —  by  force  of  arms, 
you  understand.  He  was  a  believer  in  expansion,  but  he 
thought  there  were  faults  in  the  present  —  ah  —  system, 
as  one  might  call  it.  If  you  looked  at  the  government 
precisely  as  you  would  at  a  private  citizen,  —  and  there 
was  no  real  reason  why  you  shouldn't,  no  real  reason, 
—  you  would  be  struck  by  the  thought  that  with  the 
government  business,  as  with  the  private  citizen's  business, 
expansion  could  only  be  carried  on  by  means  of  ready 
money.  The  buying  of  this  New  Mexican  Territory  proved 
that;  it  took  fifteen  millions.  Unquestionably  a  great 
deal  of  ready  money  was  necessary  to  carry  on  expansion. 
The  result  of  that  invariably  was  that  you  were  cramped  in 
some  directions  while  you  were  expanding  in  others.  The 
private  individual  —  unless  he  was  a  very  exceptional  indi 
vidual  with  a  large  capital  in  hand  —  had  to  give  notes, 
and  —  ah  —  in  the  course  of  time  he  would  inevitably  have 
to  meet  those  notes;  and  as  these  times  came  around,  in 
view  of  the  expenses  of  expansion,  he  would  not  improbably 
be  short  of  money.  "It  works  both  ways,  you  see!"  was 
Mr.  Ducey's  triumphant  deduction  from  these  arguments. 

Burke  waited  for  more,  beginning,  however  to  have  a  glim 
mering  notion  of  where  all  this  was  leading.  There  was  still 
a  good  way  to  go,  for  William  was  naturally  fond  of  words,  nor 
was  he  the  only  man  of  Burke's  acquaintance  who  talked 
a  great  deal  without  saying  anything.  And  if  it  is  difficult 


548  NATHAN   BURKE 

for  many  of  us  to  set  out  a  plain  purpose  in  plain  words, 
what  does  it  become  when  the  plan  itself  is  slightly  involved 
and  by  no  means  secure  of  a  favorable  hearing  ?  Once,  for  a 
while,  Burke  shared  an  office  with  a  couple  of  young  fellows 
about  his  own  age,  brokers  and  real-estate  agents ;  and  during 
this  association  Nat  had  noted  with  interest  the  thousand- 
and-one  ways  in  which  men  buy,  sell,  beg,  bargain  for,  and, 
above  all,  borrow  money.  They  ranged  from  the  brisk 
youth  who  clerked  in  the  other  broker's  office  up  the  street, 
whirling  in — " Hello!  Good  morning!  Got  any  money  ?" 
Yes  —  and  he  began  forthwith  to  recite  terms  and  securities; 
no  —  and  out  he  whirled  again  to  seek  some  other  dealer! 
They  ranged  from  him,  I  say,  through  every  imaginable  style 
of  person  and  proposition  down  at  last  to  the  man  who 
needed  desperately  a  loan  which  he  knew  he  would  never 
repay  —  knew  it  and  knew  that  you  suspected  it.  There 
is  a  specific  look  about  him  that  cannot  be  mistaken  — 
haven't  we  all  seen  him,  amiable,  nervous,  deprecatory, 
jolly  with  a  ghastly  jollity,  wretchedly  and  laboriously  confi 
dent  ?  He  need  not  be^a  rogue;  too  often  he  is  an  old  friend, 
banking,  let  us  hope  unconsciously,  on  that  old  friendship. 
Something  of  this  look  Nat  thought  he  detected  in  his  ancient 
employer.  Mr.  Marsh's  unkind  prophecies  —  which,  how 
ever,  to  do  the  old  man  justice,  I  am  certain  he  never  repeated 
to  any  one  else,  or  publicly  where  they  might  have  done  his 
nephew  harm  —  recurred  to  Burke  in  connection  with  various 
vague  rumors  of  the  street.  He  waited  patiently  for  the 
other  to  get  to  the  point.  "Ducey  can't  expect  to  borrow 
of  me,"  he  thought;  "and  he  knows  I  don't  conduct  a  loan 
business.  What  is  he  after  ?" 

It  was  quite  absurdly  simple  when  it  came  out  at  last; 
William  wanted  Burke  to  get  a  loan  for  him  out  of  Mr. 
Marsh  —  nothing  could  be  easier  for  Burke,  it  appeared, 
nor,  sad  and  strange  to  say,  more  difficult  for  Mr.  Ducey 
himself.  "I  don't  conceal  from  you,  Nathan,"  he  said  — 
they  had  got  as  far  as  "  Nathan  "  by  this  time  in  revived  con 
fidence  and  regard!  —  "I  don't  conceal  from  you,  and  I  sup 
pose  for  that  matter  you  must  have  noticed  yourself,  that 
my  wife's  uncle  feels,  or,  as  you  might  say,  entertains,  a  prej 
udice  against  me.  It  has  increased  or  —  er  —  augmented 
with  his  years,  and  of  course  he  is  now  a  very  old  man  — 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES   AND   MAKES   VISITS      549 

eighty-four,  I  believe  —  and  is  very  infirm  or  feeble  bodily  — 
physically,  and  —  ah  —  mentally.  His  mind,  you  know, 
is  not  what  it  was;  he  talks  and  repeats  himself  —  says  the 
same  thing  over  and  over,  and,  in  short,  has  —  ah  —  failed. 
Now,  under  these  circumstances,  I  don't  want  to  do  any 
thing  that  would  appear  to  be  taking  advantage  of  him  - 
that  any  one  could  construe  as  taking  advantage  of  his  age 
and  weakness.  I  don't  want  to  approach  him,  to  —  to  —  to 
approach  him,  in  short,  for  this  eight  thousand  dollars,  al 
though  the  sum  is  paltry  —  merely  to  overcome  a  temporary 
inconvenience  —  and  he  would  be  perfectly  secured,  and 
is  in  a  better  position  to  lend  money  than  anybody  I  know 
of.  Of  course  you  know  that  is  so;  you  know  all  about  his 
affairs." 

"You're  mistaken,  Mr.  Ducey,  I  don't  know  anything 
about  Mr.  Marsh's  affairs,"  said  Burke.  "He  never  has 
told  me  anything  of  importance  about  them." 

Mr.  Ducey  looked  politely  surprised  and  incredulous. 
"Why,  you  don't  tell  me  so,  Nathan  ?  I  thought  you  man 
aged  his  —  er  —  his  investments.  I  don't  know  why  he 
doesn't  employ  you  —  a  man  of  your  known  integrity  and 
ability  ! " 

"He  employs  another  man  of  equally  well-known  integ 
rity  and  ability,  by  the  name  of  George  Marsh,"  said  Burke, 
with  a  laugh;  "I  doubt  if  he  has  ever  considered  any  other 
agent." 

c,"Well —  er  —  ahem — he  is  a  very  rich  man,  at  least 
you  know  that  —  everybody  knows  that.  But  in  view  of 
this  dislike  or  prejudice  he  feels  against  me,  I  feel  a  —  a 
hesitation  —  a  reluctance  to  approaching  him.  He  wouldn't 
listen  to  me  —  he  hasn't  any  confidence  in  me,  somehow," 
said  William,  with  some  bitterness.  "But  if  you  would  put 
the  matter  before  him  —  it's  not  really  a  loan,  you  know, 
Burke,  it's  an  investment  —  I  am  sure  the  old  gentleman  would 
consider  it.  You  —  you  might  say  five  thousand,  if  you 
think ?  you  would  be  more  likely  to  —  ah  —  to  succeed." 
He  said  a  good  deal  more,  advancing  almost  too  many  argu 
ments  in  favor  of  this  business  transaction;  and  in  reply  to 
a* suggestion  of  Burke's  that  he  might  apply  to  almost  any 
well-to-do  merchant  in  town  instead  of  risking  a  refusal  with 
harsh  words  from  Mr.  Marsh,  entered  into  a  very  long  and 


550  NATHAN    BURKE 

confused  explanation  which  did  not  explain  —  none  of  them 
ever  do.  He  was  under  certain  obligations  to  Mr.  Marsh 
—  Mr.  Marsh  should  be  entitled  to  —  ah  —  to  first  choice, 
as  one  might  say  —  in  these  hard  times  few  men,  even 
wealthy  men,  could  spare  —  that  is  to  say,  would  have  so 
much  cash  lying  idle  —  not  that  the  sum  was  large,  but  — 
ah  —  Everybody  knowing  of  the  relationship  would  — 
ah  —  would  think  it  strange  that  he  should  go  outside  the 
family  for  a  loan  —  particularly  when  it  was  so  safe  and 
profitable;  and  that  would  produce  a  bad  impression,  would 
tend  to  destroy  confidence,  in  short.  There  were  so  many 
reasons  why  William  should  " approach"  Mr.  Marsh  that 
Burke  finally  began  to  suspect  the  real  reason  —  that  every 
body  else  had  already  been  " approached"  in  vain.  He 
promised,  in  the  end,  to  "speak  to"  old  George,  and  with  that 
Mr.  Ducey  had  to  be  content.  At  any  rate  he  appeared  so, 
asked  some  urbane  questions  about  Nathan's  own  prospects, 
gave  him  a  kind  message  from  Mrs.  Ducey  (!),  vaguely 
invited  him  to  "come  up  and  take  dinner  with  us  one  of  these 
days,"  shook  hands  with  extreme  heartiness,  and  at  last  got 
himself  out  of  the  door  —  and  almost  into  the  arms  of  Mr. 
Marsh,  slowly  puffing  up  the  stairs.  It  marred  the  exit 
somewhat. 

"What'd  Ducey  want,  Nathan?"  said  the  old  man,  set 
tling  heavily  into  his  accustomed  chair,  and  reversing  his 
cane  to  hook  the  cuspidor  into  easy  reach;  "huh?  What'd 
he  want,  hey  ?  What's  he  coming  here  for  ?  Anne'll  give 
him  particular  fits  if  he  don't  look  out." 

Burke  told  him,  watching  the  hard,  square,  lined  old  face 
with  a  little  humane  anxiety,  and  obliged  to  acknowledge 
inwardly  that  the  outlook  was  not  hopeful.  "I  thought 
William  would  bust  the  business  sooner  or  later,"  was  Mr. 
Marsh's  sympathetic  comment.  "He  wouldn't  pay  any 
attention  to  me.  Didn't  I  tell  you  that,  Burke  ?  Now  he 
wants  to  borrow  of  me,  huh  ?  Well  —  '  he  looked  around 
abstractedly,  and,  Lewis  coming  in  at  that  moment,  broke 
off  to  greet  him  genially:  "How  d'ye  do,  Archer?  Howdy 
do,  boys  ?  I  can't  stay  long  this  morning,  just  thought  I'd 
drop  in.  I  never  did  like  to  see  a  man  loafing  around  a 
store  or  an  office  if  he('didn't  have  any  business  to  attend  to 
there;  and  I  got  to  go  home  presently,  anyhow,  and  see  about 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES   AND   MAKES   VISITS     551 

something."  He  never  mentioned  Mr.  Ducey's  proposition 
again;  nor  did  Burke  hear  of  it  from  the  other. 

In  fact,  anybody  endowed  with  much  less  penetration  than 
George  Marsh,  or  even  Mr.  Nat  Burke,  might  have  known 
before  long  that  DUCEY  &  Co.  was  in  process  of  collaps 
ing,  like  the  children's  balloons  or  other  inflated  toys  I 
have  seen,  pricked  and  shrinking  to  flabby  nothingness 
before  one's  eyes.  It  had  been  a  flourishing  concern  five 
years  ago;  what  had  undermined  it?  Perhaps  " expansion," 
perhaps,  alas,  too  much  confidence  in  his  fellow-man  on  poor 
William's  part.  When  at  last  that  grim  day  came  whereon 
the  firm's  failure  was  published  abroad,  and  the  receiver 
took  the  store  in  hand,  and  there  was  an  auction-board  and 
a  pestilential  red  flag  on  the  lawn,  and  the  newspapers  filled 
up  their  columns  with  the  fruits  of  their  tireless  and  enthusi 
astic  research,  what  gold-mines,  what  wildcat  banks,  what 
rotten  insurance  companies,  what  swindling  railroad  schemes, 
what  " Alexandria"  and  "Wellsburgh"  lotteries  figured  in 
the  tale!  Burke,  reading  them,  was  reminded  against  his 
will  of  the  gambler's  cynical  aphorism:  "You  can't  skin  an 
honest  man."  Were  not  these  ingenious  enterprises  chiefly 
directed  towards  getting  something  for  nothing?  I  declare 
that  is  no  dishonest  ambition  with  some  men  —  certainly  not 
with  William  Ducey.  I  see  these  visionaries  as  poets  gone 
astray  and  dreaming  of  dollars  instead  of  dactyls  — grown-up 
boys  still  looking  for  Aladdin's  lamp  or  the  caves  of  AH  Baba. 

Notwithstanding  the  dismal  publicity  of  the  failure  and  his 
own  growing  garrulity,  Mr.  Marsh  did  not  discuss  it  at  much 
length  in  the  office.  On  Burke's  remarking  that  it  seemed 
unnecessary  and  a  great  pity  for  the  Duceys  to  sacrifice  their 
household  furniture  at  auction,  and  that  it  could  surely 
have  been  arranged  otherwise,  old  George  told  him  that 
Mrs.  Anne  had  insisted  on  this  measure. 

"Anne's  got  her  pride  and  her  notions  of  honor  and  hon 
esty,  Nathan, "he  said,  not  without  some  feeling;  "she's 
bound  and  determined  they  shall  pay  out  all  they've  got  to 
the  last  penny,  and  satisfy  William's  creditors  as  far  as  pos 
sible.  I  said  to  her:  'Why,  Lord,  'twon't  be  more  than 
four  or  five  hundred  dollars  you'll  get  out  of  the  bureaus  and 
mattresses,  and  what's  that?  A  mere  drop  in  the  bucket. 
Better  keep  'em;  you  can  set  up  your  boarding-house  with 


552  NATHAN    BURKE 

'em.'  That's  what  she's  going  to  do,  you  know,  keep 
boarders.  She  wouldn't  hear  of  it.  Poor  Anne!  I  just 
made  up  my  mind,  then,  Nat,"  said  the  old  man,  sinking  his 
voice  to  a  growling  whisper,  and  looking  sharply  around  to 
see  that  nobody  overheard  what  appeared  to  him  a  confes 
sion  of  weakness;  "I  just  made  up  my  mind  I'd  buy  in  some 
of  the  things  myself  —  the  ordinary  furniture,  not  the  fancy 
stuff  like  that  French  clock  or  the  china  figgers  on  the  parlor 
chimneypiece  —  she  don't  need  them  —  and  give  'em  back  to 
her,  so's  she'll  have  something  to  go  on.  Boarders  have  got 
to  set  on  chairs  and  eat  off  tables,  I  guess.  It's  better  than 
to  give  her  the  money  —  'twon't  cost  so  much,  anyhow,  and 
the  things  are  good.  If  she  had  the  money,  she'd  give  it  to 
William.  I  guess  folks  think  it's  kind  of  queer  I  don't  help 
'em,  but,  by  damn,  I  done  a  lot  of  helping  in  times  past.  I 
used  to  help  Walter,  and  I  ain't  going  to  begin  that  over  again. 
They'll  get  my  money  —  some  of  it,  anyhow  —  when  I  die, 
and  its  pouring  water  through  a  sieve  to  begin  giving  it  to 
Jem  now.  Anne's  the  only  one  of  the  whole  caboodle  that 
ever  wanted  to  pay  anybody  back,  or  to  help  out  by  working 
herself." 

"This  is  pretty  hard  on  her.  Doesn't  she  ever  hear  from 
George?"  Burke  asked. 

"I  believe  she  has  once.  I  believe  he  wrote  from  Mobile 
or  somewhere,  and  wanted  money.  She  scraped  around  and 
sent  him  some.  That's  the  last  I  know."  He  paused,  chew 
ing  thoughtfully.  "Say,  Burke,  did  Ducey  ever  pay  you  what 
you  spent  for  boarding  George  and  taking  care  of  him  down 
there  in  Mexico  City?" 

"No,"  said  Burke,  and  could  not  help  smiling  at  the  ex 
pression  on  the  other's  face. 

"That  ain't  good  business,  Nathan,"  said  old  George, 
severely. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Ducey  knows.  I  sent  him  a  memorandum. 
He  forgot  it,  I  guess ;  and  you  wouldn't  want  me  to  come  on 
him  now,  would  you?"  Burke  said,  and  laughed  outright. 

If  it  had  not  been  for  Mr.  Marsh's  announcement  of  his  own 
plans,  Nat  would  never  have  thought  of  going  to  the  Ducey 
sale.  Shrinking  distaste  possessed  him  at  the  notion  of  the 
crowd  noisily  invading  the  house  where  so  lately  no  one  would 


MR.    BURKE   RECEIVES   AND   MAKES   VISITS     553 

have  presumed  to  enter  unasked,  prowling  about  the  poor, 
defenceless  rooms  —  Mrs.  Ducey's  room,  Francie's  room 
-  trying  locked  doors,  exploring  the  attic  and  ^cellar,  fum 
bling  at  the  hangings,  staring,  criticising,  comparing  bargains, 
haw-hawing  over  the  auctioneer's  pleasantries.  Verily,  I 
think  I  should  rather  go  to  a  funeral  than  witness  such  a 
profanation  of  a  friend's  home  —  a  decent  family  mansion. 
Every  such  roof  whereunder  men  have  lived  and  suffered 
and  been  happy,  has  a  soul;  one  might  fancy  its  mirrors 
reflecting  with  loathing  the  strange  faces,  its  curtains  and 
carpets  shuddering  at  the  alien  touch.  Its  very  shabbinesses 
move  one  inexplicably,  they  speak  so  of  old  and  dear  associa 
tion.  There  goes  the  big  leather  arm-chair  out  of  poor 
Jones's  sitting-room  —  the  chair  he  used  to  sit  and  smoke 
and  dream  in ;  it  is  knocked  down  for  three  dollars  —  all  it 
was  worth,  probably  —  to  the  stout,  red-faced  lady  with  the 
plaid  shawl  and  the  feathers  in  her  bonnet;  she  was  their 
laundress,  I  believe.  The  little  walnut  bureau  with  the  long 
swinging  glass  and  the  drawers  up  one  side  was  Mrs.  Jones's; 
there  is  a  discolored  place  on  one  of  its  marble  tops  where  she 
got  into  the  habit  of  laying  the  curling-iron  down  —  the 
bureau  won't  fetch  much,  it's  too  worn.  The  small  room 
just  off  of  the  bedroom  ?  Why,  that  was  the  nursery; 
can't  you  see  the  gouges  all  along  the  baseboard  where  the 
points  of  her  rocker  hit  when  she  sat  in  that  low  chair  with 
a  baby  ?  And  now  from  the  garret  they  have  brought  down 
a  whole  wheelbarrow-load  of  broken  toys,  picture-books, 
building-blocks,  a  doll's  cradle  and  trunk,  the  sight  of  which 
brings  forth  much  laughter  from  the  spectators;  they  bundle 
all  the  trash  into  one  lot,  and  get  rid  of  it  to  that  elderly, 
side-whiskered  gentleman  who  is  the  Superintendent  of  the 
Presbyterian  Children's  Hospital.  I  do  not  feel  much  like 
laughing,  I!  And  I  won't  even  bid  on  the  mahogany  chest 
and  hat-rack,  although  I  used  to  envy  Jones  the  possession 
of  them;  let  somebody  who  doesn't  know  the  family  have 
them.  I  should  as  lief  have  a  mahogany  ghost  in  the  house 
as  that  relic,  and  wouldn't  know  how  to  look  Jones  in  the 
face  —  broken-down  failure  that  he  is  —  if  he  should  come 
into  my  hall  and  hang  his  hat  on  those  pegs. 

Mr.  Burke  was  quite  alone  in  this  sentimental  reluctance; 
everybody  in  the  town,  he  soon  found,  was  going  to  the  Ducey 


554  NATHAN   BURKE 

auction,  some  openly  and  brazenly,  some  more  or  less  shame 
facedly  curious,  some  with  the  avowed  intention  of  buying 
such  and  such  a  piece,  some  vaguely  on  the  lookout  for 
bargains.  It  was  understood  that  a  considerable  part  of  the 
Ducey  expenditures  had  gone  into  fittings  and  furnishings; 
everybody  hoped  they  would  realize  something,  but  things 
generally  go  for  a  fourth  of  their  value,  you  know.  Jack 
Vardaman  told  Nathan  he  meant  to  buy  one  of  the  black 
carriage-horses,  if  they  decided  to  break  up  the  pair  —  he 
needed  another  horse  for  his  buggy.  "I  said  to  Clara  that 
if  there  was  anything  she  wanted,  any  ornament,  you  know, 
I'd  bid  on  it  for  her.  They  say  everything  in  the  house  is 
to  go,  but  she  didn't  seem  to  care  for  anything,"  he  said; 
"are  you  going,  Nathan?" 

"I  —  I  thought  maybe  I'd  bid  on  some  of  the  ornaments 
myself,"  Nat  confessed,  a  little  confused  under  the  doctor's  sur 
prised  look;  " there's  a  French  clock,  and  some  mantel 
ornaments  I've  always  admired,"  he  explained,  devoutly 
hoping  he  would  be  able  to  identify  those  articles  when  they 
were  put  up.  Vardaman,  although  he  was  plainly  con 
founded  at  discovering  such  tastes  in  the  other,  said  nothing. 
They  walked  out  to  the  house  together. 

It  was  a  pleasant,  bright  May  day;  the  place  was  already 
running  over  with  people,  who  had  tramped  down  the  fresh 
grass  a  good  deal,  and  defaced  the  flower  beds,  and  broken 
branches  off  of  the  lilac  and  syringa  bushes  for  bouquets; 
Nat  noted  the  ravages  with  a  sj^mpathetic  pang.  The  front 
part  of  the  house  was  entirely  open;  only  in  the  wing  at  the 
back  there  were  some  closed  doors  and  shutters  on  the 
second  floor  where  the  family  were  staying,  some  one  said. 
The  stable  was  all  turned  out  of  doors,  alow  and  aloft;  the 
horses  were  being  paraded  for  inspection;  the  vehicles,  yes, 
that  very  shining,  varnished,  broadcloth-cushioned  barouche 
whence  Mrs.  Ducey  had  bestowed  so  crushing  a  salute  on 
him,  Nathan  now  saw  being  run  backwards  and  forwards, 
the  wheels  squinted  at,  the  upholsterings  prodded  by  dirty 
fingers.  The  stable  had  been  enlarged  since  his  day;  his 
little  room  next  the  hayloft  had  disappeared.  He  sauntered 
to  the  tool-house,  picked  up  an  axe,  and  "hefted"  it  know 
ingly,  testing  the  blade  with  his  thumb.  "Look  out, mister," 
a  working-man  standing  by  warned  him;  "nobody  hadn't 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES   AND   MAKES   VISITS     555 

orter  fool  around  them  edge-tools  that  don't  know  nothin' 
'bout  handlin'  'em."  Nathan  put  it  down  with  a  half-laugh, 
half-sigh.  He  went  back  into  the  house,  meeting  a  good 
many  acquaintances,  all  of  whom  remarked  to  him  and  to 
each  other,  "What!  You  here!"  and  presently  found  old 
Mr.  Marsh  vigilantly  attending  to  his  purchases. 

"Just  got  the  dining-room  set  —  the  chairs  and  table,  that 
is  —  she  can  get  along  without  the  sideboard  —  for  thirty-five 
dollars.  Pretty  good,  Nathan,  hey?"  he  reported.  "They're 
solid  wood,  and  cost  Ducey  a  hundred  and  twenty-five, 
I  know.  Bookcases?  No,  I  ain't  going  to  bid  on  any 
bookcases,"  he  broke  off  to  announce  decidedly,  as  one  of 
the  auctioneer's  aides  deferentially  called  his  attention  to  the 
article  next  being  offered.  "No,  I  don't  want  'em.  But 
as  soon  as  he  comes  to  the  coal-hods  and  fire-irons,  let  me 
know,  will  you?  Mighty  necessary,  coal-hods  and  fire- 
irons."  The  neighboring  competitors  nudged  each  other 
grinning;  doubtless  they  were  speculating  as  to  what  on 
earth  old  George  Marsh  was  here  buying  for. 

In  the  front  parlor  —  which,  even  under  the  present  cir 
cumstances,  was  a  much  more  splendid  apartment  than 
Burke  remembered,  with  brocatelle  and  lace  draping  the 
windows,  and  a  great  display  of  tables,  consoles,  divans, 
gilt  mirrors,  and  so  on,  now  huddled  into  corners  and  piled 
up  to  make  room  —  there  were  collected  together  on  the  top 
of  the  piano  an  army  of  vases,  candelabra,  and  china  figures, 
officered  by  two  or  three  ornate  clocks,  which  another  obliging 
myrmidon  volunteered  to  get  the  auctioneer  to  offer  as  soon 
as  the  furniture  with  which  he  was  then  engaged  was  dis 
posed  of.  And  Mr.  Burke,  becoming,  after  some  spirited 
competition,  the  proprietor  of  about  one-third  of  the  assort 
ment  embracing  a  clock,  two  tall  French  vases  or  urns  of 
a  rather  monumental  or  sepulchral  aspect  according  to  his 
own  ideas,  a  Dresden  youth  in  pink  and  yellow  striped  china 
tights  playing  a  china  guitar,  and  a  corresponding  young 
lady  in  china  petticoats  and  a  shockingly  low  bodice  — 
Nat,  I  say,  having  acquired  all  these  gimcracks,  gave  direc 
tions  for  them  to  be  put  aside  with  Mr.  Marsh's  goods. 

"Oh  my,  you'd  better  not  do  that,  sir,"  his  ally,  the  auc 
tioneer's  page,  objected;  "you  don't  want  to  mix  up  clocks 
and  bedsteads  together.  I'd  better  take  'em  out  to  the 


556  NATHAN   BURKE 

kitchen,  where  they  won't  get  knocked  around,  hadn't  I:? 
There  ain't  anybody  out  there."  Nat  followed  the  good- 
natured  lad  to  this  place  of  safety,  himself  bearing  one  of  the 
figures,  to  the  openly  expressed  amusement  of  the  crowd; 
and  just  as  he  was  setting  down  his  burden  on  the  deal  table, 
the  door  from  the  back  entry  and  stairway  opened,  and  in 
walked  Francie  Blake ! 

She  gave  an  exclamation  at  sight  of  him,  made  a  step  back, 
hesitated,  then  came  resolutely  into  the  room,  shutting  the 
door  behind  her.  Nobody  witnessed  this  meeting,  the 
kitchen  being  empty,  and,  I  suppose,  lacking  attraction  as 
compared  with  the  parlor,  where  the  sale  was  in  full  swing, 
and  the  crowd  very  thick.  Burke  was  confusedly  conscious 
of  being  glad  they  were  alone,  although  this  was  hardly  the 
place  or  time  or  way  he  would  have  planned  to  meet  her. 

"Na  —  Mr.  Burke  !"  said  Francie,  helplessly. 

"Why,  I  —  er  —  how  do  you  do?"  stammered  the  gentle 
man,  turning  a  fine  red,  desperately  aware  that  this  con 
ventional  greeting  by  no  means  explained  his  presence,  but 
perfectly  unable  to  think  of  anything  else.  "I  —  I  wasn't 
expecting  to  see  you,"  he  added  unnecessarily. 

"I've  been  upstairs  with  Aunt  Anne,"  said  Francie,  her 
wondering  eyes  travelling  between  him  and  the  pink  and 
yellow  tights.  "I  came  down  to  get  her  a  glass  of  water. 
She  doesn't  want  anybody  to  see  her,  but  it's  no  difference  if 
they  see  me.  I  didn't  know  you  were  here,  either  —  at  the 
sale,  I  mean." 

Their  eyes  met  in  silence.  They  stood  in  the  kitchen 
awkward  and  dumb,  between  them  what  memories,  what 
lost  years,  what  bitterness  —  on  Burke's  side,  at  least  —  of 
the  misunderstood  and  misjudged !  A  petty  tragedy  en 
compassed  them  —  the  tragedy  of  this  kind  house;  and 
neither  of  them  could  say  a  word.  Ordinary  forms  seemed 
wholly  inadequate  to  the  occasion,  yet  ordinary  forms  were 
all  they  had  to  use.  The  very  knowledge  that  this  young  girl 
had  taken  his  part  when  every  one  she  knew  was  against  him 
filled  Burke  with  a  passion  of  gratitude  and  tender  admira 
tion;  yet  every  convention  forbade  him  to  speak  of  it  to  her 
—  even  to  let  her  know  he  knew  of  it.  The  girl  recovered 
self-possession  first,  though  changes  of  color  slipped  across 
her  face  in  that  charming  fashion  familiar  with  her. 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES   AND   MAKES   VISITS     557 

"You've  been  bidding  ?"  she  said  casually,  glancing  at  the 
table  again  as  she  moved  towards  a  shelf  of  crockery. 

"Well,  I  — um  —  I  thought  I'd  just  put  these  things  with  the 
things  Mr.  Marsh  is  buying.  I  —  I  don't  know  much  about 
them,  of  course,  but  I  thought  Mrs.  Ducey  might  like  to 
have  —  er — "  Nat  began  to  explain  clumsily  enough,  when 
she  interrupted  him  in  frank  surprise. 

"The  things  Mr.  Marsh  is  buying  ?  What  is  Uncle  George 
buying?  We  didn't  suppose  he'd  come.  Wriy>  he  surely 
can't  be  thinking  of  setting  up  housekeeping!"  Francie 
dimpled  with  laughter  in  spite  of  herself.  "Do  you  mean 
he  got  those?"  she  demanded,  eying  the  china  guitar  with 
a  new  interest. 

Nathan  told  her,  grinning  a  little  himself.  "It  didn't 
occur  to  me  you  mightn't  know  about  it,"  he  said;  "I  sup 
posed  old  Geo  —  your  uncle,  I  mean,  would  have  said  some 
thing  to  you  —  he  might  have  found  out  what  your  aunt 
particularly  valued,  for  instance  — " 

More  dimples.  "Gracious  !"  said  Francie,  with  a  kind  of 
gleeful  satire;  "he'd  never  do  that  in  the  world.  Think  of 
the  risk!" 

"Yes,  his  idea  appears  to  be  to  give  Mrs.  Ducey  the  bare 
necessities  — " 

"  I'm  sure  it's  very  good  of  Uncle  George,  too.  But  what 
a  beautiful  time  he  must  be  having!"  the  girl  said  with  a 
sober  humor  twinkling  in  her  brown  eyes;  and  they  both 
laughed  outright.  I  think  they  were  a  little  unnerved  by 
the  suddenness  of  their  meeting;  but  in  truth  old  George, 
thrifty  even  in  his  benevolence,  animatedly  and  happily 
engaged  at  the  only  pursuit,  the  only  enjoyment  of  his  whole 
long  life,  and  one  which  he  must  sorely  have  missed  of  late, 
matching  wits  against  the  other  bidders,  saying  among  the 
trumpets  Ha,  ha !  was  a  figure  of  quaint  comedy  even  in  this 
grave  hour. 

"Then  you  bought  them  —  the  clock  and  the  vases,  and 
the  rest  ?"  inquired  Francie. 

"Well,  I  thought  it  was  pretty  hard  for  Mrs.  Ducey  to 
go  without  her  trifles  —  pretty  things,  the  kind  she's  always 
been  used  to — "  Burke  said  in  some  embarrassment;  "the 
whole  thing  is  so  hard  on  her,  anyhow.  And  so  I  —  I  — " 

"And  so  you  thought  you'd  give  her  some  of  them?" 


558  NATHAN    BURKE 

Francie  finished,  looking  first  at  the  table  and  then  at  him, 
with  a  rather  troubled  smile  this  time.  "I'm  afraid  she  won't 
want  to  take  them." 

"She  doesn't  need  to  know  anything  about  it,"  retorted 
Nat;  "just  let  'em  go  with  the  rest  —  with  what  your  Uncle 
George  buys  in.  It's  not  a  matter  of  any  importance.  Mrs. 
Ducey  was  really  not  called  upon  to  make  these  sacrifices. 
She  might  just  as  well  give  up  her  clothes  and  jewelry." 

"Well,  she  would  do  it  —  and  I  suppose  it  is  right,  isn't  it? 
The  people  ought  to  be  paid,  and  Aunt  Anne  says  it  would  be 
wicked  for  a  man's  wife  to  keep  back  anything.  She  wants 
to  help  all  she  can,  she  says.  Only,  Nathan,  it  seems  to  me, 
if  you  and  everybody  are  going  to  buy  the  things  and  give 
them  back  to  her,  she's  just  where  she  was  before  —  She 
paused,  surveying  him  doubtfully;  she  was  not  at  all  aware 
that  she  had  called  him  by  his  name.  Insensibly  they  had 
fallen  into  the  old  attitude  of  confidence.  The  estrangement, 
Burke's  ostracism,  the  clackings  of  scandal,  were  forgotten; 
they  were  absorbed  in  the  discussion  of  Mrs.  Ducey's  diffi 
culties.  And  at  Francie's  last  words  Burke  had  to  smile, 
noting  how  characteristic  of  her  aunt  was  this  generosity, 
this  stubbornness,  this  self-sacrifice  which  achieved  nothing 
but  the  making  everybody  else  uncomfortable,  this  fanatic 
devotion  to  an  unreasoned  conception  of  duty.  Perhaps 
Francie  fathomed  his  thought,  for  her  smile  followed  his. 

"Aunt  Anne  is  sure  she  is  right,"  she  said  in  a  sort  of  af 
fectionate  apology. 

"Well,  she's  doing  all  she  knows  how  to  help,  anyway. 
She's  going  to  take  boarders,  somebody  told  me." 

"Yes.  I  don't  know  how  we'll  manage,"  said  the  girl,  a 
little  humorously  dubious.  "Aunt  Anne's  always  having 
trouble  with  the  servants,  you  know—  "  she  stopped  short 
with  a  gasp,  and  a  rush  of  scarlet  to  the  roots  of  her  hair. 
I  dare  say  the  other  colored  up,  too,  for  both  must  have  been 
thinking  of  the  same  disastrous  domestic  experiment  Mrs. 
Ducey  had  made.  There  was  another  instant  of  silence, 
when  it  seemed  to  Burke  as  if  the  hundred  things  he  longed 
and  could  not  find  words  to  say  hung  almost  palpable  in  the 
air  —  and  then,  with  a  gust  of  loud  talk,  half  a  dozen  women 
from  the  auction  burst  into  the  room.  Why  should  its  two 
occupants  have  started  guiltily,  turning  even  redder  than 


MR.   BURKE   RECEIVES   AND   MAKES  VISITS    559 

before?  They  had  not  been  standing  very  close  together, 
and  all  the  world  might  have  heard  the  conversation.  The 
people  were  entire  strangers  to  both,  as  it  happened,  and 
wanted  merely  to  take  a  look  at  the  kitchen  stove.  Nathan 
was  profoundly  annoyed;  he  wished  they  could  have  kept 
out  for  another  half-minute,  anyhow.  He  might  not  see 
Francie  this  way  again,  for  nobody  knows  how  long  —  if  ever! 
he  thought  dolefully.  Here  were  these  cackling  busybodies 
running  around,  poking  and  prying  and  asking  questions: 
"Do  you  know  how  these  dampers  work?"  "Well, 
I'll  bet  that  stove  is  ten  years  old,  if  it's  a  day  !" 
"Shucks,  Maria,  you  can  cook  on  it  just  as  well  if  the  top 
lids  is  a  leetle  mite  warped."  "Say,  young  woman,  are  you 
th'  hired  girl?  Goin'  to  stay  with  th'  fam'ly  ?  TV  lady's 
pretty  hard  to  work  fer,  ain't  she?"  "How  much  you 
gittin'?"  "I  know  a  first-rate  place  — " 

"I'll  stay  here,  I  think,"  said  Francie,  sending  a  glance  of 
demure  mischief  in  Burke's  direction. 

"I  guess  Pd  better  go,"  he  said,  part  in  impatience,  part  in 
unwilling  amusement;  some  children  had  come  galloping  in 
on  the  heels  of  their  elders,  screaming  and  scuffling  with 
rough  and  tumble  play  in  the  corners.  Francie  followed 
him  to  the  door  and  out  on  the  porch  and  put  out  her  hand 
with  so  kind  a  look  that  Nathan,  holding  it  close,  was  em 
boldened  to  add  beseechingly:  "I  —  I'll  see  you  again  some 
time  —  soon  —  can't  I  ?  You're  going  to  speak  to  me  after 
this,  aren't  you,  Francie  ?  " 

She  made  an  odd  rejoinder,  looking  at  him  and  quickly 
away  again,  with  an  expression  quite  indecipherable  to  his 
heavy  masculine  wits.  "Oh,  Nathan,  you  are  so  —  so  — " 
apparently  the  word  eluded  her ;  she  could  not  say  what  he 
was,  and  went  on  headlong  — "Of  course  I'm  going  to  speak 
to  you.  I  should  have  long  before  this  if  —  if  I'd  had  a 
chance.  There  ! "  and  took  her  hand  away,  and  hurried  back 
into  the  house. 

With  this  comfortable  assurance  Mr.  Burke  walked  away, 
blessing  the  impulse  upon  which  he  had  bought  those  gew 
gaws  for  Mrs.  Ducey.  He  would  have  liked  to  go  back  and 
bid  in  the  whole  family  of  porcelain  shepherds  and  shepherd 
esses  if  he  could  have  been  sure  of  repeating  the  last  half- 
hour's  experience.  But  had  he  really  bought  them  for  Mrs. 
Ducey  ? 


CHAPTER   XVII 

TlMES  CHANGE  —  AND  WE  CHANGE  WITH  THEM 

CERTAIN  cynics  have  pointed  out  with  much  unkind  com 
ment  that  when  an  erstwhile  prosperous  and  successful  man 
loses  his  money,  no  matter  how  blameless  and  amiable  he 
may  be,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  lose  his  friends  along  with  it. 
The  thing  is  sadly  true,  but  not  for  the  ignoble  reasons  they 
commonly  assign;  most  of  us  have  no  hankering  for  any 
body's  fleshpots;  all  we  ask  is  that  every  man,  including  our 
selves,  shall  find  his  level.  We  feel  as  kindly  towards  the 
poor  fellow  as  ever,  but  the  fact  is,  not  seeing  him,  we  forget 
him.  His  name  disappears  from  the  club  list;  he  cannot 
afford  the  old  haunts  and  sports;  he  shares  no  longer  in  our 
business  nor  in  our  pleasure.  It  is  nothing,  abstractly,  to 
you  or  me  that  whereas  he  once  had  ten  thousand  a  year, 
he  now  cannot  spend  two,  —  we  did  not  value  him  for  that,  — 
but  practically  it  makes  a  difference  too  great  for  comfort  in 
our  ideas,  our  desires,  our  habits,  our  talk.  It  is  natural  that 
he  should  drift  out  of  our  lives;  if,  instead  of  having  lost  his 
ten  thousand  income,  he  had  acquired  a  hundred  thousand, 
the  probability  is  he  would  have  drifted  out  of  our  lives  just 
the  same  —  inevitably  joining  his  hundred-thousand-dollar 
class ;  and,  if  we  are  sensible  and  humane  persons,  we  should 
have  borne  him  no  grudge.  Let  the  cynics  snarl  as  they  will, 
the  brass  pots  have  gone  down  in  one  stream  and  the  earthen 
ware  in  another  since  time  began,  and  it  is  better  that  they 
should. 

So,  then,  poor  William  Ducey,  having  joined  that  company 
of  the  unsuccessful  for  whom  the  world  has  so  little  room, 
was  gradually  lost  to  view.  Nobody  knew  what  he  did,  nor 
how  he  got  along;  a  man  past  middle  life  with  no  particular 
ability,  long  in  command  of  an  office,  and  out  of  the  habit  of 
hard  work,  holding  somewhat  exalted  ideas  of  his  own  worth 
and  importance,  it  is  not  strange  that  he  could  get  no  regular 

560 


TIMES  CHANGE  561 

employment.  His  clerks,  salesmen,  accountants,  the  very 
janitor,  for  that  matter,  plain,  honest  fellows,  found  positions 
readily  enough;  but  you  could  not  suppose  such  duties  or 
such  salaries  to  be  suitable  for  Mr.  Ducey.  For  a  while  he 
had  an  office:  "WM.  DUCEY,  COMMISSIONS,  HAY,  GRAIN, 
COTTON,  COAL,  ETC.,  WHOLESALE  OR  RETAIL,  ALL  ORDERS 
PROMPTLY  ATTENDED  To,"  was  advertised  in  the  papers,  and 
neatly  printed  cards  with  the  same  legend  distributed  among 
all  our  offices.  The  establishment  was  down  a  couple  of 
steps  into  a  basement,  with  a  desk  and  stool,  and  a  fly-blown 
calendar  on  the  wall,  and  a  square  of  white-and-blue  checkered 
oil-cloth,  that  had  come  out  of  the  entry  of  their  old  Third 
Street  house,  covering  the  floor ;  Burke  remembered  it  when 
he  went  around  one  day  to  leave  an  order  for  a  car-load  of  coal, 
and  found  the  commission-merchant  paring  his  nails  in  soli 
tude  over  the  empty  ledger.  The  ink-well  was  dry  as  Sahara, 
with  a  dead  moth  in  the  bottom  of  it,  when  we  attempted  to 
make  a  note  of  the  transaction;  and  I  think  there  was  an 
assortment  of  lottery  advertisements  and  sheets  of  foolscap 
covered  with  calculations  within  the  desk,  as  of  old.  Pres 
ently  this  place  of  business  disappeared,  too,  in  its  turn.  Mr. 
Ducey  took  a  desk  in  various  offices  one  after  another,  and 
went  around  soliciting  life-insurance.  At  one  time  he  had  an 
Agency  for  some  kind  of  patent  clothes-washer;  "SLIFFY'S 
New  Improved  Circular-Motion  Combined  Washboard  and 
Wringer  used  in  Conjunction  with  SLIFFY'S  Nonpareil  Liquid 
Soap  is  destined  to  REVOLUTIONIZE  the  World  of  Labor!" 
William  would  buttonhole  you  on  the  street,  he  would  bustle 
into  your  office  in  all  the  waning  splendor  of  his  waistcoats 
and  cravats,  and  discourse  on  Sliffy  by  the  half-hour  with 
many  suave  and  elaborate  words.  I  don't  know  whether 
he  ever  sold  any  washers;  Mr.  Burke,  not  being  what  is  called 
a  " family-man,"  had  no  occasion  for  one  himself.  The  next 
time  he  met  his  old  employer  the  latter  had  a  new  agency  — 
anewsubject  for  his  unfailing  eloquence,  " Aerated  Root-Beer, 
a  Substitute  For  Champagne,  Impossible  of  Detection,  Health 
ful,  Stimulating,  Non-Intoxicant,  Especially  Recommended 
to  Those  whose  Principles  forbid  the  Use  of  Liquor!"  The 
firm  of  Burke  and  Lewis  bought  a  quantity  of  this  stuff,  and 
the  Lord  knows  it  may  be  in  the  cellars  under  our  old  offices 
still!  Even  the  boys  wouldn't  drink  it.  Before  long  Mr. 
2o 


562  NATHAN    BURKE 

Ducey  had  some  other  indispensable  commodity  to  promote, 
and  we  heard  no  more  of  the  Prohibition  tipple. 

These  successive  ventures  might  be  regarded  as  so  many 
descending  stages  in  William's  effacement.  Do  you  find 
them  amusing,  oh,  brother  Philistine  ?  I  have  seldom  seen 
anything  more  depressing.  I  think  we  were  all  glad  and 
relieved  when  he  came  less  and  less,  and  finally  not  at  all.  He 
stayed  about  the  house  and  went  on  errands  and  did  the 
marketing,  and  took  a  nap  summer  afternoons  on  the  porch 
with  a  newspaper  over  his  head;  and  was  very  dignified  at 
the  head  of  the  table  in  the  black  coat  and  black  satin  stock 
Mrs.  Ducey  kept  in  credit  by  constant  darning,  sponging, 
pressing  —  nobody  knows  what  feminine  arts.  She  would 
not  have  let  him  carry  up  coal  or  cut  the  grass  even  if  he  had 
wanted  to ;  she  liked  to  see  him  presiding  amongst  the  board 
ers,  affable,  profuse  in  small  talk,  ready  to  take  a  joke  or  a 
cigar,  keeping  up  a  desperate  fiction  of  the  pleased  host; 
and  was  as  fond,  as  attentive,  and  devoted —  if  a  shade  more 
dictatorial  and  managing  —  as  she  had  ever  been  in  their 
young  days  of  love  and  success.  If  we  were  not  so  used  to  it, 
we  would  see  something  heroic  in  the  way  a  good  woman  will 
support  and  cocker  up  the  man  of  her  choice,  and  keep  him 
not  only  comfortable  and  contented  bodily,  but  secure  in  his 
own  self-respect.  She  will  take  up  the  burden  of  making  a 
living  for  them  both,  and  with  a  gallant  and  smiling  duplicity 
cozen  him  into  believing  he  still  carries  it;  she  knows  the 
gray  mare  is  the  better  horse,  but  she  never  lets  him  suspect 
it,  and  she  even  closes  her  own  eyes  to  it. 

And  here,  I  suppose,  would  have  been  an  ideal  opportunity 
to  study  the  effect  of  adversity  on  different  characters;  but 
Burke,  having  other  things  on  his  mind,  only  remarked  at  the 
time,  not  without  a  certain  satisfaction,  that  the  gray  mare 
was  the  better  horse,  as  he  suspected  years  ago  when  he  was  a 
boy  in  Mrs.  Ducey's  kitchen.  I  think  Anne  Ducey  would 
have  sooner  taken  a  scrub-brush  and  pail  and  gone  down  on 
her  knees  to  the  Court-House  floor  than  " solicit"  people  to 
buy  trash,  and  accept  their  charity  under  a  sounding  name. 
Nothing  in  her  life  became  her  one-half  so  well  as  the  spirit 
and  resolution  with  which  she  met  her  troubles;  she  uttered  no 
complaints,  no  regrets,  no  reproaches;  she  asked  no  favors 
and  no  sympathy;  putting  her  shoulder  to  the  wheel  with  the 


TIMES   CHANGE  563 

best  possible  grace  and  always  turning  a  brave  face  to  the 
world.  Everybody  said  Mrs.  Ducey  kept  a  good  table,  and 
the  boarders  were  looked  after  so  well  that  even  they  them 
selves  noticed  it !  How  much  planning  and  worry  and  count 
ing  of  pennies  and  physical  labor  it  took,  no  mere  man  could 
guess.  When  Nathan  saw  either  Mrs.  Anne  or  Francie  on 
his  walks  abroad,  they  seemed  to  his  unintelligent  view  as 
dainty  and  well  dressed  as  ever,  though  I  have  since  been  told 
that  their  frocks  were  turned,  dyed,  pieced,  and  made  over  a 
half-dozen  times,  and  their  bonnets  were  the  work  of  their 
own  hands.  It  was  before  the  days  of  stenographers  and 
Woman's  Exchanges,  and  there  was  not  much  a  gentlewoman 
could  do  to  keep  body  and  soul  together.  Miss  Blake  em 
broidered  beautifully  and  worked  on  all  kinds  of  fine  linen 
and  baby  clothes,  I  remember  hearing;  and  she  also  had  a 
class  of  little  girls  in  "  Early  English, "  as  she  told  Nathan, 
meeting  him  one  day,  with  a  parcel  of  Lilliputian  copy-books 
in  her  hands  for  the  use  of  her  small  scholars. 

'" Early  English'?'7  repeated  Burke,  mystified. 

"  Certainly, "  and  she  began  forthwith  to  chant  with  an  un 
natural  gravity:  " ' Can  Nat  pat  the  cat ?  Yes,  Nat  can  pat 
the  cat.  See  Nat  —  "  when  she  had  to  stop  for  laughing. 
Pat  the  cat,  forsooth!  What  Nat  would  have  liked  at  that 
moment  was  to  pat  the  girl;  but  as  he  could  not  do  that  in 
public  on  the  street  corner,  and  as,  I  dare  say,  Francie  would 
have  screamed  for  the  police  if  he  had  offered  to  pat  her  in 
private,  the  young  gentleman  had  to  go  without  altogether. 
She  should  have  been  teaching  her  own  babies  and  making 
their  clothes,  instead  of  wasting  her  life  on  other  people's,  he 
thought,  looking  after  her  as  she  tripped  cheerfully  away. 
About  this  time,  people  were  beginning  to  remark  how  queer 
it  was  that  Francie  Blake  didn't  marry;  all  her  set  of  girls 
were  wives  and  mothers  now,  and  she  must  have  had  offers. 
Francie  was  rather  attractive,  you  know,  although,  of  course, 
she  was  too  tall,  too  short,  too  fat,  too  thin,  too  dark,  too  fair, 
—  too  something-or-other,  in  short,  to  come  up  to  the  stand 
ard  of  good  looks.  Yes,  it  was  funny  Francie  hadn't  married ; 
but  probably  she  wouldn't  now,  she  would  want  to  stay  with 
her  aunt,  —  she  was  a  great  help  to  Mrs.  Ducey. 

As  Miss  Blake  was  the  soul  of  loyalty  and  truthfulness,  and 
as  Mr.  Burke  himself  had  tolerably  stanch  principles,  it  is 


564  NATHAN    BURKE 

not  to  be  supposed  that,  in  fear  of  Mrs.  Ducey's  disapproval, 
they  tried  to  keep  her  in  ignorance  of  meetings  such  as  the 
last,  which  occurred  quite  frequently  on  the  streets  and  else 
where.  She  knew  all  about  it,  and  would  listen,  displeased 
but  silent,  when  Francie  or  others  mentioned  it.  Every  one 
else  had  tacitly  agreed  to  let  bygones  be  bygones,  and  take 
Nathan  back  into  social  favor;  as  sometimes  happens  with 
those  gentlemen  who  shave  their  heads,  wear  agreeably 
striped  garments,  and  practise  the  lock-step  and  other  health 
ful  gymnastics  in  the  retirement  of  our  government  homes, 
Burke's  sentence  had  been  partly  remitted  on  account  of 
good  behavior;  and  he  availed  himself  of,  and  was  grateful 
for,  the  ticket  of  leave.  But  Mrs.  Anne  maintained  towards 
him  a  species  of  armed  truce;  he  could  not  visit  the  house, 
but  he  could  take  off  his  hat  to  her  in  public  places,  and  she 
would  respond  with  a  chilly  nod.  She  would  say  a  ciyil 
how-do-you-do  to  him  if  they  chanced  to  meet  under  a 
friend's  roof,  — for,  after  all,  one  must  be  considerate  of  one's 
host  and  the  other  guests,  —  but  he  was  not  to  presume  to 
talk  to  her.  If  Francie  chose,  knowing  how  her  Aunt  Anne 
felt,  to  stop  and  chat  and  be  friendly  and  familiar  with  that 
man,  she,  Mrs.  Ducey,  was  no  tyrant,  she  always  wanted  to  do 
and  tried  to  do  what  was  right ;  Francie  was  not  a  child  any 
more,  and  if  she  would  not  profit  by  Mrs.  Ducey's  experience 
of  men  and  the  world,  she  would  have  to  find  out  for  herself. 
Mrs.  Ducey  was  the  last  person  on  earth  to  dictate  to  any 
body,  or  to  hold  any  prejudices.  Of  course,  as  everybody 
was  speaking  to  Mr.  Burke  now,  and  inviting  him  to  their 
homes,  she  couldn't  hold  back  entirely;  that  would  be  foolish; 
but  she  must  show,  nevertheless,  that  she  could  not  altogether 
overlook,  etc.,  etc.  Thus  Mrs.  Anne,  who,  despite  her  con 
fidence  in  her  knowledge  of  men  and  the  world,  was  about  as 
wise  on  those  subjects  as  a  kitten,  and  narrow,  obstinate, 
kind-hearted,  impulsive,  and  illogical  as  only  a  good  woman 
can  be.  Nathan  subscribed  to  this  wordless  peace-pact  with 
entire  good  humor,  and  kept  his  part  of  it  scrupulously;  it 
was  not  much  more  absurd  than  many  of  our  other  conven 
tions,  when  all  is  said  and  done. 

One  might  ask,  and,  in  fact,  not  a  few  inquiring  minds  did 
try  to  find  out,  what  Mr.  Marsh  was  doing  all  this  time  while 
his  niece  and  her  family,  his  own  flesh  and  blood,  were  having 


TIMES  CHANGE  565 

so  hard  a  struggle  to  keep  their  heads  above  water.  The 
historian  is  obliged  to  answer,  Nothing  whatever.  I  do  not 
know  that,  apart  from  his  purchases  of  furniture,  old  George 
ever  gave  them  a  penny,  or  helped  them  out  in  any  way.  He 
seemed  to  think  that  he  had  done  all  that  duty  or  affection 
required,  or  prudence  allowed;  and  once,  when  Burke  ven 
tured  to  suggest  that  a  regular  allowance,  no  matter  how 
small,  might  give  poor  Mrs.  Ducey  some  feeling  of  freedom  and 
security  and  be  a  moral  support  in  her  moments  of  discour 
agement  and  weariness,  retorted  very  sharply  that  he  didn't 
see  that  he  was  called  upon  to  make  any  such  provision. 

"I'm  perfectly  capable  of  managing  my  own  affairs  and 
of  deciding  when  and  where  and  how  and  who  I'm  going  to 
give  to,  sir,"  he  remarked  pointedly;  "I  don't  need  anybody 
to  tell  me.  People  think  I'm  so  rich  I  can  afford  to  support 
Ducey  and  the  whole  lot  of  'em  and  never  miss  the  money. 
Well,  maybe  I  am  —  maybe  I  am;  but  it's  never  worried  me 
any  for  folks  to  think  me  stingy.  I've  never  lost  a  wink  o' 
sleep  over  that,  I  guess.  I  never  was  much  of  a  hand  to 
meddle  with  other  people's  business,"  said  the  old  man,  fixing 
Burke  with  an  accusing  eye;  "if  Anne  wants  to  keep  William 
Ducey  squatting  around  on  his  behind  doing  nothing  while 
she  works  her  head  off,  why,  I  say,  let  her  do  it!  I  haven't 
any  call  to  interfere  giving  her  money,  so  she  can  hand  it  over 
for  him  to  spend.  Where's  her  precious  boy,  for  that  matter  ? 
Why  don't  he  pitch  in,  and  help  his  mother  a  little  ?  'S  far 
as  I  know,  the  most  work  George's  ever  done  has  been  to 
write  home  for  money.  Well,  he  ain't  going  to  get  any  of 
mine,  not  while  I'm  around  to  take  care  of  it,  anyhow!" 
He  went  away  in  a  temper,  growling  to  himself;  but  the 
next  day  came  back  to  his  favorite  corner  in  the  office,  and 
seemed  to  have  forgotten  Burke's  officiousness  and  the  whole 
occurrence.  Nat  had  to  acknowledge  privately  that  there 
was  some  force  in  the  old  gentleman's  arguments,  testy  and 
unreasonable  as  he  showed  himself.  Why  give  money  for 
Anne's  comfort  which  would  inevitably  find  its  way  to  the 
bottomless  pocket  of  William  Ducey  ?  Asjor  George,  nobody 
ever  heard  a  word  from  him. 

Nobody  ever  heard  from  him  direct,  that  is;  nevertheless, 
we  were  not  entirely  without  news.  George  was  known 
to  be  somewhere  in  the  South;  and  as  Mrs.  Ducey's  relatives 


566  NATHAN    BURKE 

on  the  mother's  side  were  scattered  thickly  about  that  section 
of  the  country,  from  Virginia  to  Texas,  had  all  visited  her 
frequently  and  were  well  acquainted  in  our  town,  and  were, 
moreover,  like  every  Southern  family,  very  strong  on  kin 
ships  and  family  feeling,  items  of  information  about  George 
arrived  at  intervals  from  widely  separated  points,  —  but  all 
to  the  same  general  effect,  —  and  were  received  by  the  com 
munity  with  much  shaking  of  heads,  and  that  solemn  satis 
faction  mingled  with  their  real  sympathy  which  is  one  of  the 
few  rewards  of  prophecy.  It  appeared  that  almost  every 
body,  at  one  time  or  another,  had  remarked  that  George 
Ducey  would  not  turn  out  well.  Now  everybody  was  vin 
dicated  !  He  had  been  met  or  seen  at  race-courses,  gambling- 
houses,  unholy  localities  of  all  kinds;  he  flourished  in  un 
counted  bar-rooms;  the  river  captains  knew  him  as  well 
as  Canada  Charlie  —  was  it  for  the  same  reasons  ?  Some 
times  he  was  very  richly  dressed,  lavish  and  prosperous; 
sometimes  at  the  limits  of  seediness  and  pawning  his  watch. 
In  Savannah  he  stayed  at  the  best  hotel,  drove  a  fine  trotting 
horse,  wore  a  tremendous  diamond  stud,  and  paid  pronounced 
attention  to  Miss  Willie  Rhett  —  she  was  one  of  those  Rhetts, 
you  know,  a  daughter  of  Sibella  Rhett,  Sibella  Lestrappe  that 
was,  kin  to  Cousin  Horace  Lestrappe  at  Baton  Rouge. 
Departing  from  that  neighborhood  rather  suddenly  (it  was 
said),  he  next  was  reported  —  after  a  long  silence  —  at  Vicks- 
burg,  exceedingly  dismal  and  shabby  and  borrowing  of 
Judge  Claiborne  —  Ambrose  Claiborne  was  a  kind  of  cousin, 
having  married  Julie  Desha,  Stevenson  Desha's  first  wife's 
child,  etc.  Once  George  disappeared  from  view  for  such  a 
length  of  time  that  Mr.  Marsh  suggested,  with  a  brutal 
humor,  that  somebody  had  better  go  down  to  the  last  city 
whence  he  had  been  heard  from  and  bail  him  out! 

"And  I  don't  see  why  you're  laughing.  It's  nothing  to 
laugh  at,  sir!"  the  young  person  who  communicated  this  to 
Burke  rebuked  him  with  great  spirit  and  indignation;  "if 
you  could  see  poor  Aunt  Anne!" 

"  How  do  you  know  I'm  laughing  ?  It's  too  dark  for  you  to 
see  my  face,"  said  the  other  (he  had  been  grinning  a  little, 
though!);  "  anyhow,  that  wouldn't  keep  me  from  feeling  very 
sorry  for  Mrs.  Ducey." 

"  Well,  you  were  laughing  just  the  same.     And  oh,  Nathan, 


TIMES  CHANGE  567 

it's  pitiful.  Her  only  son,  her  only  child !  And  she  keeps 
thinking  up  excuses  for  him  all  the  time.  When  Cousin  Eliza 
Breckinridge  wrote  that  about  her  Jimmie  seeing  George 
lose  so^much  money  at  that  card  game  —  what  do  you 
call  it  ?~f aro  ?  —  in  some  dreadful  disreputable  place  where 
they  played  —  in  Nashville,  I  think  —  why,  Aunt  Anne  just 
said,  'H'm!  And  what  was  Jimmie  Breckinridge  doing 
there  f '  It  was  really  a  little  funny,  because  nobody  could 
say  a  word  —  and  poor  Cousin  Eliza  thinks  Jimmie's  a  per 
fect  saint.  I  sometimes  feel  as  if  it  was  better  for  Aunt 
Anne  to  hear  even  stories  like  that  about  George  than  not 
to  hear  at  all,  the  way  it's  been  lately.  It's  six  months,  at 
least.  The  worst  of  it  is,  I  can't  pretend  to  think  George  is 
—  is  all  right,  you  know." 

"Why,  would  that  make  any  difference  to  Mrs.  Ducey? 
Does  it  hurt  her  feelings  ?" 

"Mercy,  of  course  it  does!"  said  Francie,  in  surprise; 
"she  wants  everybody  to  think  about  him  the  way  she  does. 
And  I  know  it's  horrid,  but  I  can't  —  I  can't  make  believe 
to  like  him.  I  ought  to,  but  it's  just  that  I  can't  /" 

"You  speak  as  if  it  were  a  very  wrong  and  distressing  thing 
not  to  be  able  to  'make  believe,"  Burke  said,  and  laughed; 
"  is  that  so  necessary  ?  " 

"I  don't  know.  I  never  thought  about  it  before.  I 
suppose  we  do  make  believe  a  lot  of  the  time  —  women  do, 
I  mean.  We  have  to,  you  know,"  said  the  girl,  thought 
fully. 

"Have  tot     Why?" 

She  only  laughed  a  little,  and  repeated,  "Why,  we  just 
have  to,  you  know,"  and  immediately  began  to  speak  of 
other  things  —  how  hot  it  was  for  so  early  in  June,  and 
weren't  the  stars  lovely  and  clear  to-night  ?  And  she  did 
hope  there  wouldn't  be  a  crowd  at  the  church,  but  she 
believed  everybody  in  town  was  going.  This  preacher  was 
said  to  be  a  perfectly  wonderfully  eloquent  man,  and  had 
Nathan  ever  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  revival  meetings  before  ? 

He  had  not,  nor  had  any  one  else  in  those  days.  The  reli 
gious  enthusiast,  belonging  to  no  denomination,  preaching 
in  any  church,  or,  failing  that,  in  any  theatre,  on  any  street 
corner,  fervent,  florid,  emotional,  working  his  hearers  and 
himself  to  strange  ecstacies  of  belief  and  repentance  and 


568  NATHAN   BURKE 

exalted  resolve  —  this  was  a  new  figure  among  us.  He  was,  I 
suppose,  a  sort  of  ancestor  of  the  present-day  Salvation  Army 
worker;  his  rough-hewn  creed  suited  all  men;  his  own  hon 
esty  and  sincerity  could  not  be  doubted,  spite  of  his  extra 
ordinary  claptrap  methods.  Without  question  there  are 
many  of  all  classes  who  must  cry  —  yowl,  bawl,  out  of  the 
depths,  at  the  top  of  their  lungs,  who  come  before  the  Lord 
with  rejoicings  fit  to  deafen  the  universe,  who  cannot  be  sure 
of  their  faith  and  hope  without  making  a  prodigious  stir 
about  it;  even  in  this  sophisticated  day,  our  neighbor  is 
constantly  " getting  religion"  and  being,  for  a  while  at  any 
rate,  let  us  hope,  bettered  by  the  process.  And  that  warm 
June  evening,  when  Miss  Blake  and  Mr.  Burke  —  having 
met  by  the  purest  accident,  of  course,  at  the  corner  just  below 
the  Ducey  house,  where  the  gentleman  happened  to  be  stroll 
ing  about  after  tea  —  when  these  two  young  people  walked 
up  to  Zion  Chapel,  on  Town  Street,  to  hear  the  revivalist 
preacher  that  everybody  was  making  such  a  fuss  over,  they 
fell  in  with  a  number  of  other  pilgrims,  and  heard  some  re 
markable  tales  of  conversions  and  changes  of  heart.  The 
Reverend  Mr.  Badger  drew  enormous  crowds,  not  one  of 
whom  knew  why  he  went ;  it  was  hot  —  there  was  nothing  else 
to  do  —  curiosity — idleness  —  desire  for  some  sort  of  excite 
ment,  —  every  one  had  an  excuse.  Nat  Burke  went  because 
Francie  chose  to  go,  and  for  no  other  earthly  reason ;  he  was 
not  given  to  pious  exercises,  particularly  of  such  a  noisy  and 
vehement  kind.  It  is  more  than  thirty-five  years,  and  Mr. 
Burke  has  never  been  to  another  revival  meeting;  this  was 
his  first  and  last.  But  that  is  not  the  reason  why  he  remem 
bers  it  so  well. 

Zion  Chapel,  when  they  reached  it,  was  tightly  packed 
with  very  warm,  fanning  people;  and  they  would  have  been 
glad  to  find  seats  in  some  quiet  corner  whence  escape  would 
be  easy  in  case  the  conversions  were  effected  with  too  much 
vigor.  "  People  get  to  crying  and  going  on  like  everything, 
somebody  was  telling  me,"  said  Francie,  whispering  —  quite 
unnecessarily,  for  every  one  was  talking  freely  without  regard 
to  the  sacred  character  of  the  building  and  occasion;  to 
approach  the  Deity  with  a  certain  informality  appeared  to  be 
part  of  the  Reverend  Badger's  method.  They  recognized 
many  acquaintances  in  the  crowd;  and,  unluckily,  some  one 


TIMES   CHANGE  569 

who  was  officiating  as  volunteer  usher,  catching  sight  of 
Burke,  came  bustling  and  insisted  on  dragging  them  to  a 
prominent  seat  in  the  front,  from  which  they  "  could  see 
everything,"  as  he  heartily  assured  them. 

"We  don't  care  about  seeing  everything,"  said  Nathan, 
annoyed  —  the  more  so,  perhaps,  as  there  had  been  some 
nodding  and  nudging  at  sight  of  Miss  Blake  in  his  company, 
and  he  saw  the  ready  color  deepening  in  her  cheeks;  "we 
may  not  want  to  stay  for  all  the  —  the  exercises,  you 
know — " 

It  was  to  no  avail;  down  they  had  to  sit,  with  the  feeling 
that  two  hundred  pairs  of  eyes  were  fastened  on  their  backs ; 
and,  to  make  matters  worse,  Mrs.  Ducey  herself  came  in  a 
few  minutes  later,  and,  being  escorted  to  another  conspicuous 
position  not  far  off,  passed  them  with  the  slightest  possible 
salutation  to  Burke,  and  a  look  of  icy  surprise  at  Francie's 
choice  of  companion.  I  don't  know  why  both  the  young 
people  should  have  felt  guilty  and  conscience-stricken,  and 
wished  they  were  anywhere  but  in  this  house  of  God.  You 
would  have  thought  that  the  congregation  was  gathered 
together  for  another  purpose  than  to  observe  their  behavior; 
and,  indeed,  it  is  very  likely  they  attracted  less  attention  than 
they  supposed. 

"I  used  to  know  a  man  named  Badger  once,"  said  Nat, 
trying  awkwardly  to  ease  the  situation;  "it's  rather  an  un 
common  name.  But  he  wasn't  a  preacher  —  anything  but ! " 
the  young  man  smiled  at  the  recollection ;  "he  was  an  actor." 

"Oh,  was  he?"  said  Francie,  a  little  exaggerating  her 
interest;  "this  one  wasn't  always  a  preacher,  either,  they  say. 
He  got  converted.  He  tells  about  it  himself.  He  was  lead 
ing  an  awful  life,  I  believe  he  says.  Maybe  it's  the  same 
man!" 

"Oh,  hardly,"  Burke  said  tolerantly;  "the  Badger  I 
knew  was  no  such  sinner.  He  was  a  very  good  sort  of 
fellow." 

"But  an  actor,  you  know  — 

"Well,  of  course  he  lived  in  a  hand-to-mouth,  harum- 
scarum  way.  But  there  wasn't  anything  wrong  with  him. 
Is  that  the  melodeon  ?  Is  that  a  hymn  they're  beginning  ?  " 

"Yes,  it's  'Sinners,  turn!  Why  will  ye  die?7  — don't 
you  know  it  ?  We  ought  to  stand  up  —  at  least  they  would 


570  NATHAN   BURKE 

in  our  church,"  Francie  says,  looking  around  with  the  faint, 
unconscious  superiority  of  a  good  Episcopalian.  And  pres 
ently  we  do  stand  up,  all  of  us;  the  chorus  bursts  out,  its 
great  sound  moving  and  uplifting  even  to  Burke,  who  did 
not  know  the  words,  and  could  no  more  sing  than  an  owl. 
But  he  liked  to  hear  Francie's  clear  soprano,  sweet  and 
weak,  no  matter  what  the  tune  —  they  all  seemed  much  alike 
to  him.  " Sinners,  turn!  .  .  .  '  Nathan,  directing  his 
eyes  towards  the  —  the  stage,  I  had  almost  called  it!  —  the 
elevated  dais,  whereon  were  arranged  a  desk  and  chair  and 
tumbler  of  drinking  water,  according  to  the  plain  tastes  of 
the  Zion  Chapel-ites,  beheld  with  a  start  that  tall,  lank, 
dramatically  monastic  figure,  arrayed  in  a  flowing  black 
coat,  and  incredibly  solemn  black  trousers,  stalking  across 
to  the  desk,  standing  there  with  folded  arms,  in  the  best  of 
Hamlet  styles,  surveying  his  audience  with  a  mystic  gaze, 
melancholy,  rapt,  remote!  The  very  fact  that  Badger's 
name  had  been  so  recently  on  his  tongue  only  added  to 
Burke's  astonishment;  he  was  too  astonished  to  be  amused. 
Even  the  instant  picture  of  Badger  as  last  seen,  his  face 
masked  with  chalk  and  daubs  of  red  paint,  clad  in  a  night 
gown-like  garment,  gambolling  merrily  about  the  sawdust 
ring  on  a  spotted  wooden  hobby-horse  in  grotesque  parody 
of  the  World-renowned  Bounding  Jockey  whose  Feats 
have  delighted  the  Crowned  Heads  of  Europe,  Ladies  and 
Gentlemen  —  even  that  contrast  suggested  nothing  comic. 
And  after  all,  thought  Burke,  recovering  a  little,  it  was  four 
or  five  years  since,  a  time  long  enough  to  work  many  radical 
changes  —  of  heart,  as  of  everything  else.  He  gave  the 
actor  credit  for  entire  sincerity;  Badger  was  an  honest  man 
-  a  very  simple,  confiding,  enthusiastic  fellow.  If  he  was 
not  exactly  the  stuff  of  martyrs,  and  would  probably  have 
quailed  before  the  cannibal  kettle,  he  was  none  the  less  a 
thorough  and  purposeful  convert,  as  his  whole  words  and 
manner  testified  when  he  began  his  address.  And  if  it  was 
plainly  agreeable  to  him  to  hold,  for  once,  undisputed,  the 
centre  of  the  stage,  he  was  not  the  first  performer  to  fancy 
himself  greatly  in  this  particular  line. 

In  truth,  Mr.  Badger's  stage  experience  —  upon  which  he 
touched  with  sombre  regret  and  warning  —  had  fitted  him 
admirably  for  this  kind  of  public  speaking,  where  a  great, 


TIMES   CHANGE  571 

resonant  voice,  trained  to  distinctness  and  emphatic  expres 
sion,  a  certain  freedom,  sweep,  and  accuracy  of  gesture, 
and  some  handy  acquaintance  with  the  classic  dramas  were 
unusual  enough  and  not  to  be  despised.  As  the  oration 
progressed,  from  the  sobs  and  sniffs  and  exclamations  and 
movement  here  and  there  amongst  the  benches,  Nathan 
perceived  that  the  time-honored  devices  of  melodrama 
were  taking  effect  —  have  they  not  always  been  ten  times 
as  successful  as  the  closest-reasoned  argument  ?  Badger 
chose  for  his  text  the  story  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  which  he  read 
from  the  Bible  with  infinite  niceties  of  elocution.  He  him 
self  had  known  (he  said)  a  youth  who  might  have  been  its 
hero;  they  had  met  (alas,  my  friends !)  amid  the  profane 
pleasures  of  the  camp  at  Matamoros  —  the  camp  of  the 
American  army  during  the  late  struggle.  And  here  the 
speaker  drew  a  vivid  picture  of  the  vicious  delights  of  that 
residence,  which  caused  one  of  his  hearers  to  smile  a  little 
covertly.  The  marble  halls  of  the  Spaniard,  his  gilded 
churches,  monuments  of  intolerance  and  iniquity,  the  riotous 
feasting,  the  luscious  wines,  the  seductions  of  Mexican  beauty 
—  Burke  was  amazed  to  find  what  he  had  lived  with  and 
escaped;  most  people  would  have  thought  Matamoros  a 
sickly,  dirty,  comfortless  hole  where  vice  might  be  as  rank 
as  Badger  described  it,  but  certainly  not  so  alluring.  Marble 
halls,  indeed!  Nat  recalled  the  " Grand  Spanish  Saloon" 
with  an  inward  laugh.  He  must  get  hold  of  Badger  and  ask 
him  about  the  Jeffersons,  he  thought. 

".  .  .  And  when  do  we  next  see  this  young  man  George, 
my  friends?"  inquired  the  orator,  pursuing  his  narrative 
in  a  voice  sunk  to  the  note  supposed  to  represent  horror 
dashed  with  pity,  and  gazing  ominously  all  about.  "  Where 
do  we  now  see  young  George  ?"  says  Badger,  a  little  louder, 
and  recoiling  a  step;  " where  do  we  find  —  "  and  at  this 
instant,  his  eye,  roaming  dramatically  over  the  faces  nearest 
him,  lit  on  Burke,  and  recognized  him  at  once!  " Where 
do  we  —  um  —  ah  —  Shall  I  TELL  you,  my  friends?" 
said  Badger,  momentarily  taken  aback  and  stammering; 
then  he  swept  on.  We  saw  George  at  the  GAMING 
TABLE  !  We  saw  the  heaps  of  GOLD  —  a  word  which  the 
convert  contrived  to  enunciate  with  a  terrified  relish,  as  if 
he  at  once  felt  and  feared  its  deadly  attractions  —  the 


572  NATHAN    BURKE 

players'  clutching  fingers  and  greedy  eyes;  we  witnessed  the 
losers'  mad  despair,  and  the  winners'  madder  orgies.  It 
was  as  good  as  a  novel  any  day,  having  Badger  tell  us  about 
George!  This  unfortunate  young  person  was  now  in  full 
career  on  the  downward  path;  I  forget  what  happened  to 
him  at  the  GAMING-TABLE  —  win  or  lose,  the  effect  was 
equally  deleterious,  as  our  preacher  was  careful  to  make 
plain;  but,  at  the  last,  after  many  such  experiences,  his 
morals  being  by  now  thoroughly  undermined,  George, 
reeling  to  his  quarters  at  a  disreputable  hour  in  the  morning, 
haggard,  bloodshot,  and  penniless,  —  we  had  an  awful 
picture  of  his  appearance,  —  committed  the  final  act  which 
should  have  plunged  him,  irredeemably,  into  the  outer  dark 
ness.  "Dishonored  and  depraved,  weakened  and  corrupted, 
he  forgot  not  alone  his  duty  to  his  family  and  himself,  not 
alone  the  principles  in  which  he  had  been  trained,  not  alone," 
—  half  a  dozen  other  things,  —  "but  even  that  feeling  which 
is  at  once  the  simplest  and  most  sacred  of  the  human  bosom 
—  the  LOVE  OF  COUNTRY!"  Badger  announced  thun 
derously  in  the  biggest  capitals.  "False  to  his  word,  false 
to  the  land  of  his  birth,  false  to  the  power  that  under  Heaven 
had  protected  his  infancy,  he  DESERTED.  .  .  .  Yes,  my 
friends,  and  he  did  more.  He  took  the  money  of  his  com 
rade,  the  man  to  whom  he  owed  a  thousand  kindnesses, 
his  more  than  brother,  the  friend  that  lay  sleeping  trustfully 
by  his  side,  he  stole  that  friend's  pay  and  DESERTED.  .  .  ." 
And  what  else  George  did  at  this  particular  juncture 
Burke  missed,  for  he  had  that  instant  recognized  with  a  shock 
of  surprise  and  apprehension  what  mutual  acquaintance  of 
his  and  Badger's  was  masquerading,  as  it  were,  under  all  this 
fustian.  He  gave  so  violent  a  start  that  Francie  noticed  it, 
and  looked  at  him,  wonderingly.  Nat  reddened  under  her 
eyes  in  his  confusion.  It  was  quite  half  a  minute  before  he 
remembered  that  neither  Mrs.  Ducey  nor  anybody  else  in  the 
assembly  could  possibly  know  of  whom  the  preacher  was 
talking,  and  began  to  breathe  more  freely.  There  sat  Mrs. 
Ducey,  almost  within  reach,  unconcerned,  her  whole  atten 
tion  fastened  on  the  speaker,  a  good  deal  excited  by  his 
oratorical  arts.  And  when  Badger  finally  brought  George 
through  devious  ways  to  a  beautiful  and  edifying  death-bed 
repentance,  Anne,  like  the  rest,  among  whom  Badger  himself 


TIMES   CHANGE  573 

was  not  the  least  moved,  was  weeping  openly  into  her  pocket- 
handkerchief.  I  believe  a  good  many  "went  forward," 
if  that  is  the  proper  phrase,  and  were  converted  in  due  cere 
mony  that  evening.  It  was  very  late  before  we  got  away. 

(After  this  evening  I  never  saw  Badger  again.  He  called  at  the 
office  next  day,  when  I  happened  to  be  out,  and  went  away  leaving 
a  note  with  many  expressions  of  regret  and  earnest  wishes  for  my 
spiritual  health  and  well-being.  He  continued  his  evangelical  career 
for  some  years,  settling  down  at  last  in  Chicago,  where  he  had  a 
"Temple"  or  "Tabernacle,"  to  which  all  creeds  were  welcomed; 
and  died  there  in  '72  of  a  lung  trouble  brought  on  by  cold  and  exposure 
during  his  pastoral  labors  at  the  time  of  the  great  fire.  —  GENERAL 
BURKE'S  NOTE.) 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

IN   WHICH  WE   HEAR  VARIOUS  NEWS 

"WHAT  made  you  jump  that  way?"  Francie  asked,  as  they 
waited  between  the  seats  for  the  crowd  to  thin  out.  It  was 
a  long  business,  further  retarded  by  everybody  stopping  for 
a  moment's  chat  with  everybody  else;  there  had  been  chairs 
placed  in  all  the  aisles,  and  the  attendants  were  trying  to 
clear  them  away  with  a  great  rattling  and  banging,  handing 
them  about  over  people's  heads.  Two  or  three  of  the  elders 
or  other  eminent  members  of  the  church  were  consulting 
together  on  the  platform;  the  converts  had  somehow  dis 
appeared;  a  surprising  air  of  business  and  bustle  replaced  the 
late  hysterical  elevation;  and  Burke  overheard  two  ladies, 
whose  eyes  were  quite  red  from  recent  emotion,  earnestly 
exchanging  views  on  the  best  methods  of  putting  up  spiced 
cherries,  as  they  edged  their  way  past  him. 

"Why  did  you  give  such  a  jump  right  there  a  little  before 
the  end?"  repeated  Francie. 

"Did  I  jump?  I  —  I  just  happened  to  think  of  some 
thing." 

She  gave  him  a  sharp  look,  and  then  suddenly  and  most 
irrelevantly  inquired,  "Is  that  the  Mr.  Badger  you  used  to 
know?" 

"Yes,  it's  the  same  man." 

"Oh,  it  was  at  Matamoros  you  knew  him,  then?" 

"Yes." 

"Don't  you  want  to  stop  and  speak  to  him?"  suggested 
the  girl;  "I  can  go  on  home  with  Aunt  Anne  — " 

"Oh,  I  can  see  Badger  any  time,"  said  Burke,  to  whom  this 
arrangement  did  not  especially  appeal.  "The  revival 
meetings  are  going  to  keep  on  for  a  week,  aren't  they  ?  We 
were  good  friends  in  his  actor  days,  you  know,  but  maybe 
now  he's  a  minister  he  won't  be  so  glad  to  meet  me  again  - 

574 


WE   HEAR   VARIOUS   NEWS  575 

Before  he  could  add  any  more  excuses,  Mrs.  Ducey  came  up 
with  her  face  of  calm  and  ladylike  disapproval.  She  had 
been  talking  to  some  one;  there  were  little  knots  of  friends 
standing  by;  and  the  reverend  gentleman,  his  labors  ap 
parently  over  for  the  day,  now  issued  forth  from  some  re 
tiring  room  and  joined  the  elders  at  the  foot  of  the  platform 
steps  with  affable  discourse. 

"You  will  come  with  me  now,  Francie.  It's  time  we  were 
going  home,"  said  Mrs.  Anne,  overlooking  Burke  this  time 
completely.  The  young  man  dropped  back  embarrassed; 
but  Francie  held  out  her  hand  to  him  in  spite  of  a  dagger 
glance  from  her  aunt.  "Good  night,  Mr.  Burke,"  she  said 
clearly  and  resolutely;  and  at  the  sound  of  the  name  Badger 
turned  around. 

I  think  he  hesitated  for  one  second.  The  color  came 
brightly  into  his  face,  which  had  got  to  looking  rather  thin, 
pale,  and  ascetic  in  accordance  with  this  new  role  the  honest 
fellow  was  playing.  Perhaps  the  hobby-horse  and  Pantaloon 
costume  flashed  into  his  mind.  But  it  was  only  for  a  second, 
and  then  he  came  running  over  eagerly,  and  seized  Burke's 
hand  with  genuine  warmth,  forgetting  all  his  innocent  theat 
rical  tricks.  People  standing  near  looked  on  interested. 

"Captain  Burke  —  it  is  Captain  Burke?  I  thought  I 
couldn't  be  mistaken.  I  saw  you  when  I  was  speaking. 
Don't  you  remember  me  —  Badger  ?  Ed  Badger  ?  I'm 
a  good  deal  changed  —  at  least  I  hope  I  am  —  but  don't  you 
remember  me  ?  " 

"Indeed,  I  remember  you  very  well.  You  were  mighty 
kind  to  me  when  I  was  sick  at  Matamoros,"  said  the  other, 
heartily.  Badger  made  a  gesture  of  denial. 

"That  was  before  I  had  seen  the  Light,"  he  said  with  a 
great  deal  of  simplicity  and  conviction;  "I'm  a  different 
man  now,  Captain.  You'd  find  me  different.  Some  of  these 
kind  friends  were  here  the  other  night  when  I  told  them  about 
it.  It's  an  awful  thought  to  me  now  that  for  thirty  years 
of  my  life  I  was  a  servant  of  sin.  But  I'm  not  too  late  — 
I'm  not  too  late  to  save  my  own  soul  and  help  save  my 
neighbor's,  I  trust,  if  the  strength  is  given  me,"  said  Badger, 
solemnly.  There  was  no  hint  of  cant  about  him.  I  am  sure 
he  must  always  have  been  no  more  nor  less  of  a  sinner  than 
the  most  of  us  —  an  average  man.  There  was  something  a 


576  NATHAN    BURKE 

little  touching  and  also  a  little  foolish  in  his  sad  self-abase 
ment;  and  I  am  afraid  he  was  not  nearly  so  interesting  and 
likable  to  Burke  as  in  the  gay,  haphazard  days  of  his  un- 
regeneracy  —  so  perverted  are  our  tastes.  Nat  would  have 
liked  to  hear  some  news  of  Mrs.  Jefferson  and  Joe,  but  found 
his  questions  inappropriate  to  this  style  of  conversation,  and 
we  might  all  have  begun  to  feel  a  certain  awkwardness  if 
somebody  had  not  intervened  to  present  Mrs.  Ducey  and 
Miss  Blake. 

"Mrs.  Drake  —  Miss  —  ah  —  Lewis-  said  Badger, 
missing  the  names,  but  making  a  brave  stagger  at  them,  in 
the  surrounding  noise;  he  shook  their  hands  with  immense 
warmth,  however  —  ministerial  cordiality  copied  from  some 
noted  evangelist.  With  all  his  sincere  conviction  he  was  as 
conscious  of  his  pose  as  ever  he  could  have  been  in  his  stage 
days,  and  played  the  part  with  an  equal  care.  It  was  a 
strange  thing  to  see  in  this  scatter-brained  fellow  who  nat 
urally,  as  Burke  knew,  kept  so  light  a  rein  on  his  thoughts 
and  speech.  Mrs.  Ducey  beginning  to  make  some  enthu 
siastic  comment  on  the  sermon,  he  interrupted  her  gently: 
"Oh,  no,  don't  say  that,  Madame.  A  man  who  hasn't 
any  training  can't  do  much  as  a  speaker.  I  am  no  orator  as 
Bru  —  that  is,  I  mean,  all  I  can  do  is  to  speak  right  out  from 
my  heart.  As  Saint  Paul  says,  '  I  come  not  with  excellency 
of  speech  or  of  wisdom.'  I  find  the  best  I  can  do  to  bring 
people  to  God  is  just  to  tell  my  own  experience,  something 
of  what  I've  seen  and  known  and  felt  myself.  It's  —  it's  the 
kind  of  example,  you  know,  that's  sometimes  far  better 
than  precept.  If  every  sinner  had  somebody  to  say  to  him, 
'Look,  brother,  this  is  what  you're  doing —  'Sister,  this 
is  where  you're  going — "; 

"Like  that  poor  young  man  you  were  telling  us  about  this 
evening,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  sympathetically;  "I  suppose  if 
in  the  beginning  he  could  have  seen  what  he  was  coming  to, 
none  of  it  would  have  happened." 

"Why,  was  it  all  true?  I  thought,  part  of  the  time,  it 
was  just  what  might  have  happened,  you  know  —  I  mean  I 
didn't  understand  that  you  had  —  had  seen  every  bit  of  it," 
said  Francie,  innocently.  Her  aunt  looked  in  horror  at  this 
questioning  of  the  reverend  word;  but  Badger,  a  little  dis 
countenanced,  hastily  explained  that  while  the  main  facts 


WE   HEAR  VARIOUS   NEWS  577 

were  true,  he  had  used  what  he  called  " —  um  —  er  —  poet 
ical  or  rhetorical  license  to  —  to  make  the  moral  stronger. 
To  bring  out  the  lesson,  you  understand.  I  —  in  point  of 
fact,  I  don't  know  how  the  young  man  ended,"  he  acknowl 
edged  in  some  confusion;  "I  hope  and  trust  he  repented. 
I  never  saw  him  after  he  deserted." 

"Oh,  he  didn't  die,  then?"  Mrs.  Ducey  asked,  distinctly 
disappointed. 

"Well  —  er  —  no.  At  one  time  I  heard  that  he  was  taken 
and  hanged  by  our  troops  for  deserting,  but  that  report 
was  afterwards  contradicted — " 

"Hanged!    How  awful!" 

"'The  wages  of  Sin  is  Death/  Madame,"  said  Badger, 
solemnly.  "Only,"  he  added  with  some  embarrassment, 
"I  was  about  to  say  that  I  understood  quite  authoritatively 
that  Ducey  wasn't  hanged  after  all.  Did  you  know  any 
thing  about  that,  Burke  ?  Somebody  told  me  you  got  him 
off  —  got  him  pardoned,  I  mean,  you  know,"  he  explained  to 
the  ladies;  "how  was  that,  anyhow?" 

"Wh-what?"  stammered  the  other,  off  his  guard,  and 
totally  unprepared  for  this  turn.  Enough  has  been  said 
throughout  this  history  to  show  that  in  such  an  emergency 
Mr.  Burke  was  anything  but  quick  or  ready.  "Hey  ?  Er  — 
what  —  um  —  ?  "  said  he,  aghast. 

"Why,  you  knew  him  ?  —  you  knew  all  along  who  I  was 
talking  about,  didn't  you?"  said  Badger.  He  flushed  up, 
glancing  from  one  to  another,  evidently  thinking  he  was 
being  doubted.  That  he  ought  never  to  have  mentioned 
the  names  of  his  "examples"  in  this  or  any  other  public 
company  did  not  once  seem  to  occur  to  him.  "Of  course 
you  remember  Ducey  —  George  Ducey,  you  know.  I'm 
sure  Burke  ought  to  remember  him,"  he  added  to  the  others; 
"it  was  his  money  the  poor  misguided  young  man  took. 
As  I  was  saying,  all  the  main  incidents  of  the  story  are  true, 
Mrs.  Drake,  and  were  well  known  at  the  time.  It  has  always 
struck  me  as  a  particularly  instructive  example  of  the  gradual 
decay  of  principle  when  not  governed  by  Christian  —  ah 
—  by  Christianity,  in  short  — 

He  kept  on  talking  in  his  distinct,  carrying  voice,  uncon 
scious  of  the  sudden,  blank  silence  that  had  fallen  on  us; 
he  was  used  to  being  heard  silently;  at  least  a  dozen  people 

2p 


578  NATHAN   BURKE 

were  within  hearing,  listening  alertly,  with  curious  looks 
divided  between  Mrs.  Ducey  and  Burke  himself,  who,  feeling, 
somehow,  as  if  all  this  were  his  fault,  looked  more  guilty  and 
wretched  probably  than  George  Ducey  ever  felt.  To-morrow 
the  story  would  be  all  over  the  town,  with  who  knows  how 
many  embellishments  —  as  if  the  poor  mother  didn't  have 
enough  to  bear  with  George  already  and  her  other  troubles! 
Nat  even  caught  a  sly  smile  here  and  there;  his  blood  quick 
ened  with  anger  at  the  sight.  He  went  up  to  Mrs.  Ducey 
and  offered  her  his  arm ;  she  took  and  clung  to  it ;  all  the  color 
had  gone  trembling  out  of  her  face ;  she  looked  an  old  woman. 
"Take  me  home,  please,"  was  all  she  said,  and  Burke  got  her 
out  by  one  of  the  side  doors  into  the  fresh  air  and  kind  dark 
ness.  They  had  gone  perhaps  half  a  square  when  Francie 
came  hurrying  lightly  after  and  caught  up  with  them,  out 
of  breath,  but  with  a  kind  of  composure  and  resolution  in 
her  firm  young  step. 

"What  did  you  say?"  her  aunt  asked  abruptly,  in  a  harsh 
voice. 

"It's  all  right.  I  told  them  it  was  the  heat,  and  you  were 
dreadfully  tired  before  you  came,"  said  Francie,  reassuringly; 
"Mr.  Badger  doesn't  know  anything.  I  made  it  all  right, 
Aunt  Anne.  Don't  worry."  And  this  cheap  device,  which 
could  have  deceived  nobody,  seemed  to  satisfy  and  tranquil 
lize  both  women!  Mrs.  Ducey  spoke  once  again  during  this 
walk. 

"Is  it  true?"  she  asked  the  young  man  harshly  and 
abruptly  as  before. 

"It  is  true,"  said  Burke. 

They  got  back  to  the  house  somehow,  after  a  walk  which 
seemed  to  Burke  interminable,  like  the  pointless  journeyings 
of  a  dream.  The  lights  were  out  and  most  of  the  porches 
deserted  as  they  came  along;  and  I  suppose  all  the  boarders 
had  gone  to  bed,  too,  the  place  was  so  silent.  It  was  the 
new  house  to  which  they  had  moved  after  the  catastrophe 
in  William's  business;  Burke  had  never  set  foot  within  it 
before.  "Ring  the  bell;  Mr.  Ducey  must  be  up  —  he'll  let 
us  in  —  he  ought  to  be  told  —  ring  the  bell,"  said  Anne,  in  a 
kind  of  hysterical  impatience. 

Burke  obeyed  her;  but  after  an  untold  amount  of  bell- 
ringing,  it  was  not  William  who  came  downstairs  and  opened 


WE   HEAR  VARIOUS   NEWS  579 

to  us,  but  one  of  the  boarders,  a,  young  fellow  whom  Nat  knew, 
a  clerk  in  one  of  the  shops  —  we  heard  him  making  profane 
remarks  in  an  undertone  as  he  sought  for  matches  to  light  the 
hall  lamp.  And  being  lightly  attired  in  a  shirt  and  trousers, 
he  skipped  upstairs  in  a  panic  before  Francie's  petticoats  in 
the  doorway. 

"Mr.  Henderson  —  isn't  that  Mr.  Henderson?"  the  lady 
of  the  house  called  after  him.  "Where's  Mr.  Ducey?  Will 
you  knock  on  the  bedroom  door  and  tell  him  to  come  down, 
please  ?  Tell  him  I  want  him." 

"He  ain't  in,"  said  the  youth,  modestly  retiring  behind  the 
bannisters  in  the  upper  hall;  "somebody  came  for  him,  and 
he  went  out  after  you  went  away,  and  he  hasn't  got  back 

yet." 

"Went  out ?     Do  you  know  where  he  went  ? " 

"No.  Up  to  the  revival,  I  guess,  though.  I  heard  'em 
say  something  about  it."  He  vanished. 

"I  —  I  wanted  William  to  be  here  —  I  wanted  him  to 
know,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  feverishly.  "He  ought  to  know 
right  away.  You  ought  to  tell  him  yourself." 

"Why,  what  should  I  tell  him?"  said  Burke.  "There  is 
nothing  for  me  to  tell  — ' 

"He  ought  to  know  about  —  about  George.  If  it's  all 
true  what  that  man  said  about  him  —  about  his  taking  your 
pay,  and  all.  You  ought  to  have  told  us  before.  I  don't 
see  why  you  didn't  tell  us.  Of  course  George  just  took  your 
money  with  the  intention  of  borrowing  it,  Mr.  Burke.  He 
never  in  the  wide  world  would  have  —  have  taken  it  any 
other  way.  He  must  have  forgotten  to  tell  you  about  it 
afterwards.  He's  nothing  but  a  young  boy,  and  —  and  his 
character's  not  formed  yet  —  you  couldn't  expect  him  to 
know  anything  about  business  obligations  —  he  hasn't 
had  any  training  or  experience.  But  you  ought  to  have  told 
us,  and  Mr.  Ducey  would  have  seen  that  you  were  paid  back, 
of  course." 

"There's  one  thing  you  can't  ever  pay  him  back,  though," 
interrupted  Francie,  with  a  heightened  color,  and  speaking 
in  a  hard  little  way,  entirely  foreign  to  Burke's  knowledge 
of  her;  "that's  for  keeping  George  from  being  hung  —  the 
man  that  stole  from  him  and  told  shameful  stories  about 
him  —  stories  that  you  believed.  Nathan  saved  his  life, 


580  NATHAN    BURKE 

and  never  let  anybody  know  a  thing  about  it.  And  you 
thought  you  were  too  good  to  speak  to  him.  You  ought  to 
go  down  on  your  knees  and  ask  him  to  forgive  you!" 

"Francie!"  cried  her  aunt.  "  How  dare  you  speak  to  me 
like  that  ?  How  dare  you  ?  " 

"It's  the  truth,  and  you  know  it,"  said  the  girl,  savagely; 
"George  never  told  the  truth  in  his  life,  and  you  know  that, 
too  !  How  do  you  feel  about  it  now  ?  You've  gone  and 
scattered  his  mean  lies  all  over  everywhere  — 

"Oh,  hush!  Francie,  hush!"  said  Burke,  sickened  at  the 
violence  of  these  two  naturally  gentle  creatures,  shamed 
to  the  soul  to  behold  them  quarrelling  over  him;  "it's  all  over 
and  done  with.  Let  it  be.  Calling  George  names  can't 
do  me  any  good.  You  may  say  I  saved  George's  life  if  you 
choose  to  put  it  that  way.  All  I  did  was  to  go  to  General 
Scott,  and  try  to  get  him  to  let  the  boy  off  —  that's  every 
thing  I  did.  Any  man  that  knew  George  would  have  done 
that  much  in  sheer  humanity  —  Jim  Sharpless  would  have 
done  it,  if  I  hadn't  been  there.  It's  nothing  to  make  a  rum 
pus  about  — 

"You  took  care  of  him  afterwards  in  Mexico  City.  Much 
thanks  you  got  for  that!"  said  Francie,  bitterly.  Tears 
sprang  into  her  eyes.  "They're  unjust  to  you,  Nathan; 
they're  mean  and  unjust,  everybody  is.  They  —  they 
haven't  any  sense.  And  you  j-just  t-take  it  all,  and  never 
do  a  th-thing!"  she  sobbed.  There  was  something  as  ma 
ternal  in  her  anger  and  distress  over  him  as  in  Mrs.  Ducey's 
over  George. 

"  I'm  sure  I  have  always  tried  to  do  right  and  be  just,"  said 
Anne,  trembling.  "It's  not  my  fault  if  I  didn't  know  about 
some  things.  I  couldn't  know  unless  somebody  told  me, 
and  nobody  did.  I  couldn't  help  that.  I'm  very  grateful 
to  you,  Mr.  Burke,  for  all  you  did  for  my  son,  now  that  I 
know  about  it.  I  don't  think  it  was  quite  fair  to  us,  though, 
to  keep  us  in  ignorance  all  this  time.  I  think  it  was  your 
duty  to  tell  us.  And  he  was  paid  for  all  George's  bills  in 
Mexico  City,  Francie,  because  I  sent  the  money  myself. 
I  sent  it  to  George  to  give  you  — 

"Oh,  sent  it  to  George!"  said  Francie,  with  scorn;  "I  don't 
believe  Nathan  ever  saw  a  cent  of  it.  Did  you?" 

"Why,  I— I—" 


WE   HEAR   VARIOUS   NEWS  581 

" That's  enough,"  the  girl  said  dryly;  "you  never  could 
tell  stories,  Nathan;  it's  no  use  your  trying." 

Mrs.  Ducey  looked  at  him,  and  did  not  challenge  this 
judgment.  "I  never  owed  anybody  a  penny  in  my  life 
that  I  didn't  try  to  pay,"  said  the  poor  woman.  She  dropped 
into  a  chair  and  put  up  her  shaking  hands  to  her  face.  They 
used  to  be  pretty  little  hands,  and  it  gave  Burke  a  pang  to  see 
them  now  calloused  and  discolored  by  the  work  of  these  last 
hard  years.  "  I  always  pay  when  I  can  —  I've  tried  so  hard. 
How  much  was  it,  Nathan  ?  A  captain's  pay  is  forty  dollars 
a  month,  isn't  it  ?  And  how  much  was  the  other  —  the  rest  ? 
I  haven't  the  money,  you  know,  but  you  —  you  might  come 
and  b-board  it  out,"  said  poor  Mrs.  Ducey,  with  sobs. 

If  the  young  man  had  been  a  Shylock,  she  could  have  made 
no  more  abject  an  appeal.  It  was  pitiful,  it  was  grotesque, 
it  was  exasperating.  Nathan  could  hardly  comprehend  what 
all  this  tragic  feminine  fuss  was  about;  their  distress  of  mind 
touched  him  unutterably,  but  it  appeared  perfectly  unrea 
sonable.  He  wished  from  his  heart  William  Ducey  would 
come;  then,  at  least,  they  could  talk  about  it,  man  to  man, 
if  the  family  were  so  determined  on  talking,  and  get  at  some 
sort  of  understanding.  It  was,  of  course,  very  hard  for  Mrs. 
Ducey  to  learn  these  additional  unpalatable  facts  about  her 
son;  but  if  he,  Burke,  had  chosen  to  overlook  George's 
obliquities  towards  himself  all  these  years,  why  should  they 
take  up  the  question  now  ?  He  wanted  nothing  so  much  as 
to  leave  it  all  dead  and  buried,  but  they  would  resurrect  it  in 
spite  of  him !  They  ought  to  accept  George  for  the  worthless 
thing  he  was,  as  Burke  and  everybody  else  had  accepted 
him  long  ago.  Why  shoulder  his  obligations  ?  Why  worry 
about  him  at  all  ?  Yet,  of  course,  it  was  natural  —  it  must 
be  natural  —  somebody  had  to  look  out  for  George,  he  caught 
himself  thinking.  In  the  whole  of  his  own  hard-working  and, 
I  hope,  honest  life  nobody  had  ever  looked  out  for  Nat  Burke, 
and  nobody  ever  would  —  but  somebody  must  look  out  for 
George !  Somebody  —  unthanked  and  unrewarded  —  is  al 
ways  looking  out  for  all  the  weak-kneed;  and  such  is  the 
eternal  responsibility  of  the  strong  we  forget  that,  if  eternal, 
it  is  also  wholly  irrational. 

"Why,  I  don't  want  your  money,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  he  said 
at  last,  looking  down  at  her,  perplexed  and  infinitely  sorry. 


582  NATHAN   BURKE 

"I  did  very  little,  only  what  was  natural  and  what  anybody 
else  would  have  done  for  George;  and  I  didn't  do  it  for 
pay.  As  to  what  he  owed  me,  the  poor  boy  was  most  kind 
about  nursing  me  when  I  was  sick,  and  didn't  do  it  with  any 
idea  of  pay,  either,  I  am  sure.  So  can't  we  call  the  score 
even  ?  Let's  have  no  more  talk  about  it.  You  believe,  and 
you  have  every  right  to  believe,  certain  stories  about  me,  and 
you  don't  want  me  in  your  house  —  as  a  boarder  or  any 
other  way.  Very  well;  let  it  be  so.  Nobody  on  earth 
could  think  it  your  duty  to  make  such  a  sacrifice,  and  I 
wouldn't  accept  it,  anyhow.  I  don't  see  that  what  you  have 
just  heard  need  make  any  difference  in  our  relations.  If  I 
had  saved  George's  life  a  dozen  times  over,  I  should  still  be 
the  same  Nathan  Burke,  whose  own  life  you  think  to  have 
been  so  corrupt  that  you  hesitate  to  speak  to  him.  Amen. 
Let  us  each  go  our  way  as  we  did  before,  and  forget  this," 
concluded  Burke,  looking  about  for  his  hat,  and  a  little 
abashed,  all  at  once,  to  notice  what  a  lengthy  oration  he  had 
been  delivering. 

Mrs.  Ducey  wiped  her  eyes  with  a  fierce  movement. 
"No,  you  shan't  go  —  you  shan't  go  out  of  this  house 
till  you've  been  paid,"  she  said  with  so  much  of  her 
old  headlong  obstinacy  that  Nathan  could  scarcely  keep 
back  his  smile.  "I've  always  done  right,  as  far  as  I  knew," 
said  Anne,  vindictively;  "here  —  take  this  —  it'll  pay  you 
and  more,  I  know,  because  it  cost  a  great  deal  when  William 
gave  it  to  me,"  she  resolutely  gulped  back  a  sob.  "  Take  it  — 
take  it — !"  She  detached  some  small  object  from  the 
collar  of  her  gown,  and  held  it  out  to  the  bewildered  young 
man  with  a  vehement  gesture  —  thrust  it  into  his  face,  in 
fact. 

Francie  cried  out:  "Oh,  don't,  Aunt  Anne  —  please  don't ! 
Nathan  is  —  he  isn't  —  oh,  don't  you  know  —  can't  you 
understand—  '  her  voice  shattered  into  sobs;  she  shrank 
up  against  the  wall  in  shame  and  distress. 

"What  is  it  ?  What  do  you  want  me  to  do  with  this  ?" 
said  Burke,  helplessly,  and  took  the  thing  —  it  was  a  piece  of 
jewelry,  as  he  now  saw  —  from  Mrs.  Ducey 's  hand  mechani 
cally,  and  stood  between  them,  holding  it,  with  a  questioning 
look. 

"It's  my  opal  pin  —  my  pin  with  the  diamonds  around  it, 


WE   HEAR   VARIOUS   NEWS  583 

Nathan,"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  tremulously.  " Don't  you  re 
member  it  ?  It's  real,  you  know.  I  —  I  don't  know  how 
much  it's  worth,  but  — " 

Burke  stared  at  it ;  he  remembered  it  well.  "How  do  you 
happen  to  have  it  ?"  he  asked  in  a  strange  voice. 

"I  couldn't  give  it  up  —  I  just  couldn't  —  at  the  sale,  you 
know.  I  thought  I  might  keep  that  much,  anyhow.  It's 
my  very  own  —  I  didn't  have  to  give  up  my  own  things," 
said  Mrs.  Ducey,  on  the  verge  of  more  tears.  "  Anyway,  I'm 
glad  I  kept  it  now.  I'd  rather  pay  you  than  anybody." 

"But  I  thought  this  had  been  stolen.  Isn't  this  the  pin 
you  said  Nance  stole  ?"  said  Nat,  slowly. 

At  the  sound  of  that  unlucky  name,  there  was  a  startled 
pause;  Anne  looked  in  alarm  as  if  she  thought  Burke  might 
proceed  to  some  indecent  discourse.  And  then  Francie  said 
hurriedly:  "Nathan,  it  was  never  stolen  at  all.  It  had 
slipped  down  somehow  behind  the  mantelpiece,  and  we  found 
it  when  the  men  were  fixing  the  new  mantel  —  when  Aunt 
Anne  had  that  room  done  over.  There  was  a  big  crack 
behind  the  old  one  —  they  had  to  plaster  it  up.  It  was 
while  you  were  away  —  five  years  ago.  While  you  were 
in  Mexico." 

After  another  silence,  Burke  said,  "I  don't  want  this, 
Mrs.  Ducey,"  and  laid  it  on  the  table  beside  her. 

She  looked  at  him  in  a  sort  of  uncomprehending  and 
baffled  vexation.  "Oh,  mercy,  what  do  you  want,  then?" 
she  ejaculated  impatiently,  forgetting  that  she  had  been 
repeatedly  assured  he  wanted  nothing  whatever.  "It's 
enough  to  try  the  patience  of  Job!  I  suppose  you  won't 
take  the  pin  because  of  —  because  of  Nance  Darnell.  Of 
course  she  didn't  steal  it  —  I  was  mistaken  about  that. 
I've|never  had  a  chance  to  talk  to  you  since  we  found  it,  or 
I'd  have  told  you.  I'm  always  ready  to  acknowledge  when 
I've  made  a  mistake,  I  hope.  But,  after  all,  it's  just  as  well 
things  happened  as  they  did,  and  I  let  her  go.  If  it  wasn't 
my  pin,  it  would  have  been  something  else,  maybe  worse. 
The  way  she  turned  out  proves  that.  I  always  had  a  kind  of 
feeling  that  there  was  a  bad  streak  in  her,  but  I  fought 
against  it;  I  wanted  to  help  her.  When  I  heard  about  — 
about  how  she  was  —  was  behaving  down  there  in  Mexico, 
I  was  thankful  I  hadn't  kept  her  in  the  house  any  longer. 


584  NATHAN    BURKE 

I'm  speaking  pretty  plain,  I  suppose,  but  I  can't  help  it. 
You  forced  it  on  me." 

Nathan  did  not  answer.  What  should  he  have  said? 
And  in  a  moment  a  sudden  slamming  of  the  gate  and  rush 
of  steps  up  the  walk  startled  them  all.  Mrs.  Ducey  was  still 
talking,  Francie  gazing  at  Burke  with  a  frightened  look  on 
her  pale,  tear-stained  face,  the  opal  pin  winking  with  its 
uncanny  fires  from  its  place  under  the  direct  lamplight, 
when  William  burst  upon  them,  breathing  hard,  his  waist 
coat  undone,  the  perspiration  glistening  on  his  pallid  fore 
head. 

"Anne!  Good  Heavens,  where  have  you  been?  I've 
run  all  over  town  looking  for  you.  I  hadn't  any  idea  you'd 
be  at  home,  till  somebody  said  they'd  seen  you  starting  for 
the  house.  You've  got  to  come  at  once  —  I  hope  it's  not 
too  late  already.  The  people  sent  up  to  tell  us  Uncle  George 
is  dying  —  he's  had  a  stroke  and  he  can't  live.  Vardaman's 
there,  and  he  says  the  old  man  can't  live.  Come  along  ! " 

" Uncle  George?  He  can't  live?"  echoed  Mrs.  Ducey, 
blankly.  "Goodness!"  She  gathered  up  her  shawl  me 
chanically.  "Do  button  your  vest,  William;  it  looks  so 
horrid  that  way!" 


CHAPTER  XIX 
IN  WHICH  MR.  MARSH'S  WILL  is  OPENED 

WHEN  Jimmie  Sharpless  and  I  were  in  Mexico  together,  at 
Tampico  and  Puebla  and  whenever  the  army  happened  to 
encamp  near  a  town  of  any  size,  we  had  a  habit  of  visiting 
its  cemeteries,  not,  it  should  be  said,  for  the  sake  of  the  moral 
effect,  or  because  our  tastes  were  anywise  morbid,  but  out  of 
the  same  curiosity  that  led  us  to  the  market-houses  and 
churches,  and  finding  the  graveyards  twice  as  significant  and 
interesting  as  either  of  these  latter.  They  were  all  of  one 
forbidding  pattern,  utilitarian,  ungraced  by  sentiment.  In 
the  wide  barrenness  of  that  land  one  would  have  supposed 
that  His  acre  might  be  spared  to  God  without  loss;  yet  I 
doubt  if  any  Mexican  place  of  burial  was  that  spacious. 
Adobe  walls  ten  feet  high  and  on  one  side  always  six  feet 
thick  shut  them  in;  not  a  flower  bloomed  there,  not  a  blade 
of  grass  dressed  the  hard,  dusty  mounds.  The  population 
was  so  crowded  in  these  grim  democracies  one  soon  ceased 
to  be  surprised  that  a  number  of  the  dead  were  deposited 
in  cells  constructed  in  that  thick  section  of  the  wall  I  have 
spoken  of;  and  the  outer  end  of  the  hole  being  sealed  up  with 
a  tablet  recording  the  name  and  age  of  the  deceased  with 
(generally)  a  pious  sentence  commending  his  soul  to  Provi 
dence,  you  might  behold  them  docketed  and  pigeon-holed, 
tier  on  tier,  dreadfully  resembling  a  post-office.  "But  I  am 
afraid  some  of  the  mail  will  never  reach  its  address!"  Jim 
said  sardonically,  examining  the  inscriptions.  We  learned 
that  the  cells  were  rented  or  leased  by  the  year,  like  any 
habitation  of  the  living,  the  deceased  leaving  some  provision 
for  it  in  his  testament,  or  laying  the  obligation  on  his  heirs. 
Nothing  ever  changes  in  Mexico;  the  cemeteries  must  have 
been  there  in  the  selfsame  spot  for  centuries ;  and,  not  know 
ing  whether  this  queer  custom  was  an  inheritance  from 
Spaniards  or  Aztecs  or  some  older  civilization  still,  Burke 
used  to  search  the  stone  labels  for  their  most  ancient  dates. 
He  had  a  fancy  to  discover  the  oldest  tenant,  and  a  tablet  of  a 

585 


586  NATHAN    BURKE 

hundred  or  so  years  back  would  have  moved  him  like  the 
tombs  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Lo,  seek  as  he  would,  there 
was  not  one  antedating  the  last  generation!  Sharpless, 
however,  upon  this  singularity  being  pointed  out,  was  ready 
with  an  explanation.  "I  inquired/'  he  said,  "of  a  one-eyed 
gentleman  who  officiated  as  sexton  at  one  of  these  places. 
It  seems  they  turn  'em  out  if  the  rent  isn't  paid.  They 
turn  out  Don  Ramon  de  Silva's  old  rattletrap  skeleton  and 
his  mouldering  old  coffin  —  he  is  several  months  in  arrears  — 
and  make  room  for  the  late  Don  Manuel  Carlos  Derecho  y 
Izquierda,  just  dead  the  other  day  of  the  small-pox  —  may  he 
rest  in  peace!  He  will,  as  long  as  his  son,  young  Don  Man 
uel,  doesn't  forget  the  rent.  But  when  Manuel's  son 
Manuel  comes  along,  what  then  ?  Shall  a  man  be  forever 
footing  the  bills  of  an  old  party  who  died  before  he  was  born? 
Grandfather  Manuel's  tastes  were  too  expensive;  he  had  no 
idea  of  what  the  cost  of  living  would  be  in  thirty  or  forty 
years,  or  he'd  have  thought  twice  about  the  cost  of  dying, 
by  George!  I  fear  old  Don  Manuel  will  be  evicted  in  his 
turn.  I  asked  my  one-eyed  friend  what  became  of  the  de 
faulting  tenants  ?  'Sefior,'  says  he,  'they  burn  them.  They 
burn  them  with  kindlings,  at  night,  so  it  shall  offend  nobody. 
But,  Senor,  nobody  ever  remembers  about  them,  or  comes  to 
inquire/  We  do  these  things  better  at  home,  Burke.  We 
forget  our  parents  decently,  without  any  disagreeable  pub 
licity.  And  Pa  doesn't  saddle  any  such  unwarrantable  tax 
on  us;  he  hasn't  left  us  anymore  than  we  can  scratch  along 
comfortably  on,  as  it  is.  We  buy  a  lot  in  the  cemetery  —  as 
handsome  a  lot  as  there  is  —  and  we  look  after  it,  sir;  we 
have  the  grass  cut  every  time  there's  a  funeral  in  the  family! 
Did  any  man  ever  know  the  way  to  his  family  lot  ?  For 
tunately  there  is  always  a  plat  in  the  cemetery  office.  We 
wouldn't  think  of  turning  out  that  skinflint  Jones's  grand 
father  and  putting  Cousin  Joshua  in  his  place;  and  it's  pretty 
late  in  the  day  to  burn  Jones's  grandfather  —  that  operation 
must  have  begun  long  ago.  Oh,  unquestionably  we  do  our 
duty,  and  we.  ought  to  be  thankful  that  we  are  so  much 
better  than  our  neighbor  Mexicans." 

It  once  or  twice  occurred  to  Burke  to  wonder  what  would 
have  happened  if  old  George  Marsh  had  been  subject  to  the 


MR.   MARSH'S   WILL   IS   OPENED  587 

Mexican  forms;  how  long  his  memory  would  have  endured, 
and  who  among  the  heirs  would  have  provided  for  the  poor 
old  sinner's  tenure  of  his  narrow  house  for  as  much  as  ten 
years,  or  even  five.  Truth  to  tell,  Nat  could  imagine  it  of 
none  of  them,  though  each  had  been  indebted  to  the  old  man 
many  times  over  during  his  life,  and  benefited  considerably 
at  his  death;  and  though  they  were  all  just,  upright,  and 
kind-hearted  men  and  women,  no  more  inclined  to  greed  or 
selfishness  than  —  than  any  other  set  of  heirs.  It  is  a  posi 
tion  which  somehow  seems  to  bring  out  all  mankind's  ugliest 
qualities;  and  as  in  Burke's  occupation  of  the  Law  he  was 
frequently  concerned  with  the  administration  of  estates,  this 
melancholy  fact  was  familiar  to  him  long  before  the  Marsh 
heirs  gave  an  illustration  of  it. 

None  of  them  were  present  at  the  funeral,  except  the  Ducey 
household;  the  others,  dispersed  as  they  were,  many  of 
them  hundreds  of  miles  away  in  Louisiana  or  Florida,  could 
not  have  reached  the  city  in  time.  In  fact,  there  was  a  very 
scanty  attendance  of  friends  and  acquaintances,  making 
that  depressing  ceremony  more  depressing  still.  George 
Marsh  had  long  outlived  his  old  friendships  and  the  capacity 
for  making  new  ones.  Mr.  Ducey,  scurrying  about  in  search 
of  suitable  pall-bearers,  —  for  William  was  a  stickler  for  the 
proprieties,  and  shone  greatly  in  the  discharge  of  duties  of 
this  sort,  where  he  always  displayed  admirable  energy  and 
good  taste,  —  confided  to  Burke  that  it  was  almost  impossible 
to  find  anybody  who  would  do.  People  had  ceased  to  know 
Mr.  Marsh;  they  were  all  too  young,  too  busy,  too  self- 
centred;  and  " Hello,  has  that  old  fellow  gone  at  last?" 
expressed  their  utmost  interest  in  him.  Messrs.  Burke  and 
Lewis,  in  default  of  any  one  more  appropriate,  were  finally 
invited  to  appear  on  that  sombre  staff.  The  office  was 
closed,  and  all  our  young  clerks  attended  in  a  body,  instead 
of  taking  advantage  of  the  holiday  to  go  fishing,  something 
which  a  good  deal  surprised  us.  They  missed  Mr.  Marsh, 
the  boys  said.  And,  for  quite  a  while  afterwards,  his  old 
split-bottomed,  hickory  chair  stood  in  its  corner  of  our  main 
room,  disused,  in  a  respected  isolation.  His  landlady,  with 
whom  he  had  boarded  for  the  last  twenty  years,  turned  out 
in  full  mourning,  wept  profusely  and  rather  noisily  amongst 
her  black  crape  and  bombazine,  and  would  have  joined  the 


588  NATHAN   BURKE 

family  in  their  reservation,  but  for  Mrs.  Anne's  sharp 
snubbing.  The  latter's  indignation  at  this  impertinence 
may  be  imagined.  "The  idea!  Crying  around  as  if  she 
were  one  of  us,  and  wanting  to  stick  herself  in  with  the 
family.  I  suppose  she  thinks  just  because  Uncle  George 
lived  there  so  long,  she  can  be  familiar.  I  never  knew  her 
nor  called  on  her  in  my  life.  She  probably  is  certain  he's 
left  her  something  —  I  don't  see  why  she  should  expect  it. 
He  had  people  of  his  own,  and  didn't  need  to  leave  anything 
to  strangers.  And  the  way  she  kept  up  that  sniffling  and 
crying  was  too  absurd  —  just  as  if  she  were  broken-hearted! 
I'm  his  niece,  and  though,  of  course,  I  feel  badly  about  poor 
old  Uncle  George,  I  can't  do  much  crying.  It's  perfectly 
impossible  to  cry  for  a  person  eighty-six  years  old!" 

Dr.  Vardaman  and  Miss  Clara  were  there,  of  course; 
and  Governor  Gwynne  came,  looking  much  more  feeble  and 
broken  than  Mr.  Marsh  ever  had,  although  he  lacked  at 
least  ten  years  of  the  latter's  age.  But  old  George  had  hardly 
showed  any  signs  of  physical  breakdown  even  during  his 
last  days.  "He  et  just  as  hearty  as  ever,"  the  landlady  told 
Burke  mournfully;  "and  never  complained  of  a  single  pain. 
That  last  night  I  remember  his  saying  when  he  got  up  from 
the  table  that  he  was  going  to  get  some  papers  out  of  his 
desk  and  take  'em  down  for  you  to  look  over  the  next  morn 
ing,  Mr.  Burke.  He  was  just  as  spry.  The  lamp  was  lit  in 
his  room,  and  he  must  have  set  down  by  the  window  to  cool 
off  for  a  little  —  it  was  awfully  hot,  you  know.  That's 
where  we  found  him,  setting  by  the  window.  We  didn't  any 
of  us  get  to  bed  till  right  late  'count  of  the  heat,  and  I  kept 
noticing  that  the  light  was  burning  in  his  room  still;  I  was 
kind  of  restless,  and  every  time  I  woke  up  there  was  that 
light  shining  through  the  transom.  Last  I  got  kind  of 
uneasy,  and  got  up  and  knocked  at  Mr.  Sievers's  door  and 
asked  him  if  he  wouldn't  go  up  and  see  what  was  the  matter 
with  Mr.  Marsh's  light.  Minute  he  went  in  the  room  and 
came  back  and  says,  '  Mrs.  Woolley,  will  you  please  to  come 
here  a  minute  ? '  I  just  had  a  kind  of  feeling.  I'm  that  way, 
I  always  feel.  Mr.  Marsh  was  setting  there  in  his  chair  by 
the  window,  kind  of  sunk  down  in  a  heap,  you  know,  and 
breathing  hard  that  way  they  do.  I  don't  think  he'd  opened 
his  desk  at  all;  he  had  the  key  in  his  hand,  and  a  paper  in  the 


MR.    MARSH'S   WILL   IS   OPENED  589 

other  all  clenched  up  —  but  'twasn't  any  paper  out  of  his 
desk,  it  was  a  letter  that  had  come  while  he  was  out,  and  I'd 
sent  Sairey  up  with  it  and  laid  it  on  his  table.  I  guess  he 
was  reading  it  when  the  stroke  took  him.  I  knew  what  it 
was  the  minute  I  saw  him.  '  You  run  for  the  doctor  as  hard 
as  you  can  pelt  —  run  for  Dr.  Vardaman!'  I  says  to  Mr. 
Sievers.  We  got  him  in  bed  and  got  the  brandy  and  harts 
horn,  but  it  wasn't  any  good.  Only  Mrs.  Ducey  needn't 
think  that  everything  wasn't  done  for  her  uncle,  Mr.  Burke, 
because  it  was.  Dr.  Vardaman  said  we  couldn't  have 
done  any  more.  He  died  at  six  o'clock  that  next  morn 
ing.  I  took  that  key  out  of  the  poor  old  gentleman's  hand 
and  the  letter  and  gave  'em  both  to  Mr.  Ducey,  and  gave  him 
all  the  other  keys,  and  there  hasn't  been  a  thing  touched. 
Whatever  the  papers  were  in  his  desk  they're  all  there  safe 
and  sound.  ..." 

All  this  and  a  good  deal  more  she  imparted  to  Nat  in  a 
voluble  undertone  while  the  pall-bearers  were  waiting  in  the 
boarding-house  back-parlor  with  the  blinds  lowered,  and 
sandwiches,  plum-cake,  and  whiskey-and-water  set  out  for 
them  on  the  table  according  to  the  custom  of  our  day.  The 
hearse  stood  outside;  in  a  few  moments  we  should  start  for 
the  church.  It  was  always  a  chatty  half-hour  with  the  pall 
bearers.  I  don't  now  why  Mrs.  Woolley  selected  Burke  for 
her  confidences;  but  people  so  frequently  did  that  nobody 
in  the  room  saw  anything  out  of  the  way  in  it;  and  she  evi 
dently  felt  the  need  of  some  sympathetic  or,  at  least,  receptive 
listener  after  her  late  rebuffs.  We  buried  the  old  man  in  the 
lot  in  Greenwood  which  he  himself  had  bought  —  at  a  bar 
gain,  more  than  likely  —  thirty-five  years  before,  where  you 
may  see  his  headstone  with  "  George  Marsh.  1766-1851 "  on 
it;  the  lettering  is  a  little  indistinct  now.  " Uncle  George 
always  liked  everything  plain  and  simple,  and  we  want  to 
carry  out  his  wishes,"  Mrs.  Ducey  said  gravely;  "besides  any 
kind  of  monument  would  be  very  expensive,  and  none  of 
us  separately  have  the  money  to  put  one  up.  I'd  be  per 
fectly  willing  —  although  I  wasn't  left  any  more  than  any 
of  the  others  —  to  give  my  share;  but  you  can't  persuade 
all  of  them  to  join  in."  Sentiments  which  reflected  the 
highest  credit  on  herself  and,  indeed,  on  the  whole  family; 
for  every  one  of  the  heirs  said  exactly  the  same  thing ! 


590  NATHAN    BURKE 

Mr.  Marsh's  will  had  been  drawn  by  Governor  Gwynne 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  before.  On  its  being  opened,  he  was 
found  to  have  left  all  his  property  to  be  divided  equally 
among  his  six  or  seven  nieces  and  nephews,  Walter  Marsh's 
children;  no  mention  was  made  of  his  English  relatives; 
he  must  have  outlived  all  of  his  immediate  family  on  that 
side,  and  knew  none  of  their  descendants.  A  clause  pro 
vided  that  "the  sums  which  I  have  from  time  to  time  ad 
vanced  to  William  Ducey,  husband  of  the  aforementioned 
Anne  Marsh  Ducey,  for  which  I  hold  their  joint  notes,  shall 
not  be  charged  against  the  share  of  the  said  Anne  in  the 
division  of  my  estate."  There  were  no  charitable  bequests; 
old  George's  charity  began  —  and  ended  —  at  home,  and, 
considering  the  more  or  less  needy  circumstances  of  all  the 
legatees,  no  one  could  criticise  him.  The  fortune  he  had 
amassed  by  so  many  years  of  thrift  and  hard  work  came  to 
about  a  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  dollars  —  a  good 
round  sum  for  those  days,  although  not  so  much  as  he  was 
reputed  to  have  been  worth.  In  the  beginning  he  had  named 
an  old  friend  and  contemporary,  Mr.  Jabez  Starke  as  execu 
tor.  He  had  the  luck  to  survive  this  gentleman  several 
years;  and  Gilbert  Gwynne  told  me  with  laughter  he  re 
membered  old  George  coming  into  their  office  shortly  after 
Starke's  death,  and,  after  carefully  inquiring  whether  an 
erasure  would  make  any  legal  difficulty  in  his  will,  and  ex 
plaining  that  he  wanted  to  appoint  somebody  in  the  dead 
man's  place  —  "he  went  to  work  on  it  with  his  old  horn- 
handled  penknife,  Burke.  He  said  he'd  just  leave  the  'rke' 
on  the  end  of  the  surname  as  that  would  save  scratching; 
but  I'm  afraid  he  had  a  pretty  hard  time  hitching  the  rest 
of  the  new  name  on  in  front.  You  can  scarcely  read  it." 
There  could  be  no  doubt  of  Mr.  Marsh's  intention,  however, 
as,  at  some  later  date,  he  had  added  at  the  bottom  of  the  page 
in  a  hand  still  firm  and  legible  at  fourscore:  "I  hereby  ap 
point  Nathan  Burke,  Esq.,  my  executor;  and  I  desire  that  no 
bond  be  required  of  him." 

We  cannot  suppose  this  choice  to  have  been  the  most 
agreeable  in  the  world  to  Mrs.  Anne  Ducey.  She  had  to  sub 
mit  to  it;  and  allowed  Burke  to  come  to  the  house  in  the 
course  of  business,  and  went  herself  to  the  office  to  sign 
papers,  on  the  principle  that  what  can't  be  cured  must  be 


MR.   MARSH'S   WILL  IS   OPENED  591 

endured.  One  of  the  first  questions  she  asked,  with  a  certain 
perceptible  suspicion,  was  what  that  phrase  "  without 
bond"  meant  exactly.  Burke  explained. 

"It's  only  an  expression  of  confidence,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  he 
added,  reddening  a  little,  "as  it  happens  an  executor  is 
obliged  to  give  bond  in  this  State.  But  Mr.  Marsh  didn't 
know  that." 

"H'm!"  said  Mrs.  Anne,  "then  it  doesn't  amount  to  any 
thing  after  all,  one  way  or  the  other  ?  I  mean  it  don't  make 
any  difference  to  anybody?" 

"To  nobody  but  me,"  said  Nat.  And  perhaps  something 
in  the  young  fellow's  face  struck  Mrs.  Ducey,  for,  after  going 
out  of  the  office  and  downstairs  into  the  street,  she  suddenly 
and  quickly  came  back  again,  her  black  mourning  skirts 
flowing  and  rustling  with  that  slight,  dainty  noisiness  so 
characteristic  of  her.  She  went  impulsively  up  to  the  desk. 

"I  —  I'm  afraid  you'll  think  I  meant  something,  Nath  — 
Mr.  Burke,  by  what  I  said  just  now.  I  was  just  thinking 
maybe  it  sounded  to  you  as  if  I  meant  something.  But  I 
didn't,  you  know.  I'm  sure  we're  all  satisfied  with  the  way 
you're  doing  —  everybody  in  the  family  is  satisfied."  She 
held  out  her  hand  to  him,  troubled,  anxious,  equally  generous 
and  tactless;  they  shook  hands  for  the  first  time  in  five 
years. 

If,  however,  the  family  were  satisfied  with  Mr.  Burke's 
administration,  —  and  a  number  of  them  wrote  to  ask  who 
"this  man  Burke"  was, — they  were  not  by  any  means  so 
with  the  will  itself,  although  you  might  have  thought  it,  on 
the  face  of  it,  as  fair  and  kindly  meant  an  instrument  of  the 
sort  as  ever  was  invented.  Almost  any  one  of  the  Marsh 
heirs,  I  think,  could  have  disposed  of  the  property  better. 
Before  long  letters  began  to  crowd  in,  complaining,  inquiring, 
expressing  the  most  profound  regret  and  astonishment  that 
Uncle  George  had  thought  it  necessary  to  say  this,  to  do 
that,  to  leave  written  down  the  other.  Nobody  wanted 
to  make  trouble,  for  everybody  hoped  it  would  be  under 
stood  that  they  were  not  in  the  least  disappointed, 
for  Heaven  knew  they  had  never  expected  a  penny 
from  Mr.  Marsh,  and  the  old  gentleman  had  been  most 
generous,  but  they  would  merely  like  to  have  it  ex 
plained  why,  etc.,  etc.?  It  was  a  well-known  fact  —  all  the 


592  NATHAN   BURKE 

family  knew  it  —  that  Uncle  George  had  taken  advantage  of 
his  brother's  widow,  Grandma  Marsh,  when  he  wound  up 
Grandpa's  estate,  so  that,  after  living  in  the  greatest  luxury, 
she  had  been  obliged  to  scrimp  along  in  the  smallest  possible 
way  for  years.  And  they  were  glad  to  see  that  the  old  man 
had  done  the  right  thing  at  last,  as  far  as  he  knew  how,  by 
leaving  his  property  to  be  divided  among  her  children;  but 
how  did  it  happen  that,  etc.,  etc.?  Nat  was  amazed  to  find 
out  to  how  many  different  people  Mr.  Marsh  had  been  in 
debted  for  his  rise  in  the  world.  So-and-So's  husband  had 
gone  to  the  rescue,  and  practically  saved  George  from  ruin 
during  the  financial  panic  of  1820.  Such-a-One's  father  had 
absolutely  made  Mr.  Marsh  by  introducing  him  to  the  gov 
ernor  of  Louisiana  and  other  influential  persons  to  whom  he 
could  lend  money.  Somebody  else  had  pointed  his  atten 
tion  to  a  vast  cotton  speculation  on  which  he  cleared  thou 
sands.  Was  there  ever  such  a  lucky  man  in  his  advisers  and 
friends  ?  And  alas  for  these  latter  !  They  saved  him,  them 
selves  they  could  not  save;  they  all  died  leaving  their  families 
poor  as  church-mice  ! 

Mrs.  Ducey  herself  was  very  surprised  and  resentful  upon 
hearing  that  her  son,  Uncle  George's  own  namesake,  had  not 
been  separately  and  handsomely  remembered;  not  that  she 
was  disappointed,  or  expected  anything  more  than  she  had  a 
right  to.  Uncle  George  had  always  been  very  good  to  her;  he 
simply  wouldn't  let  her  take  care  of  him,  although  she  would 
have  loved  to  do  it,  and  she  knew  it  looked  queer  to  people 
that  she  didn't.  But  he  had  never  cared  for  Georgie,  and 
had  never  done  him  justice.  She  knew  Georgie  hadn't 
always  acted  right,  but  he  was  too  young  yet  to  be  judged, 
or  found  fault  with,  and,  anyhow,  he  wasn't  any  worse  than 
other  young  men  —  nor  indeed  half  so  bad  —  and  she  cer 
tainly  thought  Uncle  George  might  have  been  more  consist 
ent  and  less  prejudiced.  As  for  that  about  those  notes  not 
having  to  be  paid  back,  or  charged,  or  whatever  the  term 
was,  she  thought  it  was  perfectly  horrid  of  him  to  have  had 
that  put  in,  when  he  knew  it  would  be  published  when  the 
will  was  probated,  and  might  injure  William  in  a  business 
way  very  much.  If  he  didn't  want  the  money,  why  didn't 
he  burn  the  notes  up,  and  then  there  couldn't  have  been  any 
talk  about  it?  There  was,  however,  less  talk  about  it  than 


MR.   MARSH'S    WILL   IS   OPENED  593 

poor  Anne  supposed,  for  that  William  Ducey  was  in  old  man 
Marsh's  debt  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  dollars  was 
no  news  to  any  one,  and  hardly  aroused  a  single  comment; 
and  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  not  one  of  the  other  heirs,  with 
all  their  questions  and  objections,  ever  found  fault  with  that 
provision  of  the  will,  or  even  remarked  on  it. 

From  all  this  it  will  be  seen  that  every  Marsh  heir  had  a 
solid  moral  right  to  his  share,  so  that  there  was  really  no 
occasion  for  them  to  express  much  gratitude  towards  the 
dead  man,  or  to  cherish  his  name,  or  do  anything,  in  short, 
but  forget  him  as  quickly  and  conveniently  as  might  be. 
After  all,  he  had  been  a  hard  and  unlovable  man;  it  would 
not  have  been  in  nature  for  people  to  remember  him  long  or 
kindly.  Mr.  Burke  simplified  the  situation  wonderfully  by 
explaining  to  the  more  belligerent  of  his  correspondents,  who 
perhaps  estimated  their  claims  a  little  too  high  and  threat 
ened  legal  proceedings,  that  any  attempt  to  break  the  will 
would,  under  our  laws,  involve  a  recognition  of  the  English 
heirs,  who  might  be  legion  and  would  have  equal  rights;  and 
that,  in  his  opinion,  half  a  loaf  was  ever  so  much  better 
than  no  bread  —  arguments  of  which  everybody  at  once 
perceived  the  force ! 

He  was  surprised  to  find  that  Mr.  Marsh's  desk  and 
papers,  which  Nat  remembered  as  the  only  neat,  tidy,  and 
well-ordered  thing  about  the  old  man,  were  in  a  good  deal  of 
confusion  although  nothing  was  missing,  and  much  had  been 
carefully  treasured  up  which  could  not  possibly  be  of  any  use 
to  old  George  himself  or  any  one  else.  Dozens  of  those 
greasy  old  pocket-books  in  which  he  was  so  fond  of  making 
calculations  —  stacks  of  the  ancient  ledgers  and  account- 
books  of  DUCEY  &  Co.,  wherein  Burke  recognized  his  own 
entries  of  almost  fifteen  years  back  —  packs  of  ragged,  yel 
lowing  letters  half  a  century  old  —  he  went  through  them  all, 
gaining,  unconsciously  perhaps,  a  more  intimate  knowledge 
still  of  George  Marsh's  life  and  character.  Locked  up  in  a 
separate  tin  box  were  a  number  of  deeds,  mortgages,  ab 
stracts  of  title  which  may  have  been  those  very  " papers" 
the  old  man  was  forever  planning  to  have  him  "look  over." 
Nathan  knew  something  about  them  already;  they  were  all 
on  record,  and  once  upon  a  time  he  had  been  quite  diligent 
to  search  the  county  books  and  find  out  all  he  could  about 
2Q 


594  NATHAN    BURKE 

Nathan  Granger  and  the  lands  in  the  Refugee  Tract.  Haven't 
we  all  had  our  dreams,  eh  ?  In  youth,  at  any  rate  ?  There  is 
something  fine,  even  to  the  most  practical  and  prosaic  of  us, 
in  fancying  one's  self  for  a  moment  a  disinherited  hero, 
coming  into  his  own  again.  I  have  seen  the  thing  happen 
on  the  stage  and  in  countless  novels.  The  rightful  heir 
brings  out  a  " paper"  that  proves  everything;  all  hostile 
claims  are  whiffed  away  like  gossamer;  the  illegal  possessors 
of  the  title  and  estates  are  turned  out  neck  and  heels  — 
hurrah  for  Right,  Justice,  the  Law  !  Burke  had  long  since 
put  all  these  gilded  notions  by;  he  read  the  deeds  with  a 
grave  curiosity.  And  it  was  while  he  was  thus  occupied, 
sitting  alone  in  the  office  one  day,  that  he  received  a  visit 
from,  of  all  men  in  the  world,  'Liph  Williams,  whom  he  had 
not  seen  for  years. 

'Liph  was  hale  and  hearty;  and,  in  fact,  he  could  not  have 
been  over  fifty,  but,  like  all  his  kind,  he  had  begun  life  early 
and  aged  long  before  his  proper  time.  He  had  grandchil 
dren  already,  some  of  them  grown  up,  and  he  talked  like  a 
Methuselah.  Mrs.  Williams  was  dead;  and  Mrs.  Darce,  too, 
at  the  age  of  pretty  nigh  a  hundred,  'Liph  reckoned;  she 
had  outlived  her  daughter  a  year  or  two.  He  himself  had 
had  a  right  smart  spell  uv  fever,  didn't  know  ezzactly  what 
you'd  call  it,  but  when  he  got  up,  I  swanny,  he  was  plumb 
deef  in  both  ears!  Uv  course,  it  wored  off  after  erwhile, 
but  he  was  a  leetle  deef  still.  Didn't  know  whether  it  was 
th'  fever,  er  th'  med'cine  th'  doctor  give  him.  What  ?  Ye 
gotter  speak  a  leetle  louder,  Nat. 

You  had  to  roar,  in  truth;  and  the  weather  being  warm 
and  all  the  windows  wide  open,  Nathan  wondered  with  in 
ward  amusement  how  the  passers-by  would  construe  the 
racket.  "I  hope  'Liph  hasn't  any  secrets  to  tell,"  he  said 
to  himself.  The  deefness  had  not  wored  off  quite  so  much  as 
'Liph  believed,  and  his  own  voice  was  loud,  high-pitched,  and 
monotonous,  as  those  of  deaf  people  commonly  are. 

"  Yeh  needn't  ter  shout  at  me,"  he  explained  a  little  testily, 
observing  the  effort  Burke  was  making;  "jest  speak  a  leetle 
loud,  y'know.  Well,  well,  it's  kinder  good  ter  see  ye,  Nat; 
I  ain't  seen  yeh  sence  yeh  come  home  from  th'  war  'n'  got 
th'  sword  give  ye.  I  was  thar,  y'know,  bellerin'  f er  '  Fightin' 
Burke '  th'  loudest  one  in  th'  crowd,  I  guess.  When  ye  come 


MR.   MARSH'S   WILL  IS   OPENED  595 

out  at  th'  top  of  the  State-House  steps  after  they  done  it, 
y'know." 

"I  remember.  You  came  around  to  see  me  afterwards," 
bawled  Nathan. 

"Uh-huh,  that's  so.  We  had  a  real  nice  time,  talkin', 
didn't  we,  'bout  pore  Nance  Darnell,  V  oF  Jake  V  ol'  times," 
said  'Liph,  with  unconscious  irony.  "Yes,  we  hed  a  good 
talk." 

"You  ought  to  come  in  town  oftener,  'Liph." 

"Well,  there  ain't  anything  fer  me  ter  do  here,  an'  nobody 
much  to  see,"  observed  the  other,  tactfully;  "there's  ben  a 
lot  uv  folks  died  here  lately,  Nat.  I've  allus  noticed  they  go 
that  way;  kinder  die  off  in  droves,  all  of  'em  that  are  'bout 
of  an  age.  OF  man  Marsh  he  held  on  longer  'n'  most.  Did 
he  leave  much,  Nathan?" 

"Yes,  he  left  a  good  deal." 

"They's  a  sight  of  relatives,  I've  heerd  tell.  I  guess  it 
won't  amount  to  no  great  lot  apiece,  come  to  divide  it  'round 
among  'em  all,  hey?" 

"Oh,  everybody  will  get  something." 

'Liph  settled  back  in  his  chair,  baffled.  "Pretty  dern 
pertickler,  ain't  ye?"  he  said  sulkily;  and  then  a  new  expres 
sion  came  into  his  face.  He  cleared  his  throat,  and  hitched 
closer  to  Burke's  desk.  "  Nat,"  he  said  in  what  he  meant  for 
a  confidential  whisper  —  you  could  have  heard  it  in  the 
street!  — "ain't  you  goin'  ter  do  anything  'bout  that? 
'Bout  them  Refugee  claims,  yeh  know?" 

"Hey?  What  about  them?  Do  what?"  said  Nathan, 
surprised  and  taken  aback. 

"Why,  Lord  love  you,  I  know  all  'bout  'em.  'Bout  yer 
Grandpa  Granger  owning  that  there  proputty  in  th'  Refugee 
Track  'n'  all  —  Slemm,  he  told  me,"  'Liph  said  with  impa 
tience;  "yeh  don't  hev  ter  be  so  almighty  close-mouthed. 
That  proputty  had  orter  be  yourn,  by  rights,  Nathan. 
Ain't  you  goin'  ter  put  in  no  claim?  Now  would  be  a  first- 
rate  time,  seems  to  me." 

Burke  considered  the  other  a  minute  in  a  thoughtful  silence. 
Then,  "I'd  like  to  know  what  Slemm  told  you,  'Liph,"  he 
said. 

"Jest  what  I'm  sayin'  — jest  what  I'm  tellin'  ye,"  cried 
out  Williams,  eagerly;  "I  wouldn't  make  no  mistake  'bout 


596  NATHAN    BURKE 

a  thing  like  that,  would  I?  He  said  they  was  a  lot  uv  land 
in  th'  Refugee  Track  that  th'  Gov'ment  give  yer  gran'ther 
back  in  th'  Revolution  time,  becuz  he'd  quit  Canady  where 
he  was  born  'n'  lived  till  he  was  a  man  grown  —  becuz  he'd 
quit  there  'count  uv  bein'  agin  th'  oP  country  in  th'  fight. 
He  said  th'  Gov'ment  done  th'  same  for  a  hull  passel  uv  folks 
—  Refugees,  they  called  'em.  He  said  yer  grandpaw  set 
tled  in  New  York  State  first,  'n'  then  he  moved  to  Penn- 
sylvany,  'n'  then  I  s'pose  he  thort  he  might  's  well  come 
'n'  hev  a  look  at  his  land  that  th'  Gov'ment  give  him.  An' 
then  Slemm  said  he  up  'n'  died  'fore  he  ever  laid  eyes  on  it  - 
died  uv  th'  cholery  when  they  hed  a  kinder  pest  uv  it  over 
to  Steubenville,  er  somewhere  near  there.  Slemm  he  said  th' 
childern  was  all  minors  at  th'  time,  'n'  he  guessed  nobody 
knew  much  'bout  th'  land,  er  they  didn't  know  enough  ter 
keep  holt  uv  it,  anyhow.  He  said  he  hedn't  kep'  track  uv  all 
uv  'em ;  he  thort  they  mostly  died  er  driftedoff  somewhere.  But 
yer  maw  was  one;  he  hed  her  all  down,  'n'  knew  she  was 
married  ter  John  Burke,  'n'  all  there  was  ter  know  'bout  her. 
Why,  I  remember  yer  maw,  Nathan,  but  we  didn't  know 
nothin'  'bout  her  people;  she  was  a  pore,  sickly  little  thing  — 
didn't  live  no  time.  OP  Mam  Darce  she  told  Slemm  a  good 
deal,  y'know.  I  ric'lect  th'  first  time  he  come  we  sus- 
picioned  he  didn't  mean  you  no  good,  but  when  we  got  to 
knowin'  him  better  we  found  out  he  was  a  real  nice  gentleman. 
He  jest  wanted  ter  see  you  righted,  that's  all." 

"Very  kind  of  Mr.  Slemm,  I'm  sure,"  said  Burke,  dryly. 

"Why,  warn't  it  all  so,  Nat?" 

"Oh,  yes,  it's  true  —  or  mostly  true." 

"Well,  then,  ain't  you  goin'  to  do  somethin'  'bout  it, 
Nathan?  Slemm  he  was  a  lawyer  —  -  'course  I  don't  know 
how  good  a  lawyer,  but,  anyway,  he'd  oughter  know  what  he 
was  talking  'bout  —  -  'n'  he  said  that  every  man  Jack 
that  ownded  a  title  that  went  back  to  Granger  could  be  lawed 
out  uv  th'  proputty  easy  as  easy!  Becuz  he  said  oP  man 
Granger  never  sold  a  foot  uv  it.  It  was  just  there,  'n'  no 
body  payin'  any  'tention  to  it,  till  some  slick  feller  come  along 
at  th'  time  they  was  layin'  th'  city  out,  y'know,  'n'  claimed 
ter  be  Granger's  agent,  'n'  sold  th'  hull  track,  'n'  pocketed  th' 
money.  Slemm  said  th'  deeds  that  feller  give  —  I've  plumb 
f  ergot  his  name — " 


MR.   MARSH'S   WILL   IS   OPENED  597 

"Name  was  Strawbridge  —  I  have  seen  it  on  the  records," 
Burke  said. 

"Yes,  that  was  it,  Strawbridge.  Slemm  said  his  deeds 
wasn't  worth  a  damn;  only  as  long  as  they  wasn't  any  Grang 
ers  turning  up  ter  make  a  fuss,  folks  jest  moved  in  'n'  settled 
up  all  over,  V  bought  V  sold  time  'n'  time  agin.  He  said 
you  could  sue  'em  all,  'n'  git  it  all  back." 

"And  I  suppose  Mr.  Slemm  would  be  willing  to  conduct  the 
case?" 

"Well,  yes,"  'Liph  admitted  with  a  grin;  "uv  course  he 
wanted  to  make  somethin'  out  uv  it.  That's  all  right,  ain't 
it,  Nat?  I  don't  see  no  harm  in  that.  Man's  got  to  live. 
But  if  ye  don't  like  him,  ye  could  do  yer  own  lawin',  an' 
'twouldn't  cost  ye  nothin'.  Only  Slemm  he  knew  all  'bout 
who  th'  proputty  owners  was  now,  'n'  how  they'd  bought  it, 
'n'  everything.  OP  man  Marsh  ownded  more'n  three-fift's 
uv  it,  he  said.  That's  why  seems  to  me  'twould  be  a  pretty 
good  time  right  now  to  begin  perceedings,  Nathan.  Ye  c'ld 
git  at  th'  heirs  so  easy." 

"I  knew  all  about  it  long  before  I  ever  heard  of  Slemm.  I 
found  it  out  ten  or  twelve  years  ago  when  I  was  reading  law 
in  Governor  Gwynne's  office,"  said  Nat;  "and  if  I  didn't 
bring  action  then,  I'm  hardly  likely  to  now.  It's  not  so  easy 
as  you  think  to  make  good  a  claim  like  that,  'Liph,  after  all 
these  years." 

"Well,  but,  my  Lord,  Nathan,  why  not?  'Tain't  as  if 
you  was  tryin'  ter  chisel  'em  outer  it;  it's  yourn,  fair  'n' 
square.  It  'Id  be  a  pilin'  lot  uv  money;  it  'Id  make  a  rich 
man  of  ye." 

"I  don't  know  that  I  want  a  piling  lot  of  money  and 
I'd  much  rather  make  a  rich  man  of  myself,  without  that 
kind  of  help,"  said  Burke,  part  vexed,  part  amused.  There 
could  be  no  doubting  the  sincerity  and  single-heartedness  of 
Williams's  interest;  he  had  been  gradually  growing  more  and 
more  excited,  raising  his  voice  and  thumping  his  hand  down 
on  the  table  to  underscore  his  statements.  It  was  nearing 
the  hour  of  the  afternoon  when  people  would  be  coming  in, 
and  Burke,  with  one  ear  alert  for  the  opening  door  in  the 
outer  office,  found  the  conversation  entirely  too  personal  for 
publicity. 

"You  act  plumb  foolish,"  said  the  other,  in  a  temper;  "uv 


598  NATHAN   BURKE 

course  I  know  —  er  I  kin  guess  —  why  you  didn't  come 
on  oP  Marsh  fer  yer  proputty.  Yeh  thort  ye  was  beholding 
to  him.  Ye  allus  was  a  good  sort  of  boy,  Nat,  V  ye  allus 
let  yourself  be  put  upon.  OP  George  didn't  make  no  bad 
bargain  when  he  took  'n'  put  you  in  his  office,  'n'  th'  oP 
skeezicks  knew  it.  You've  paid  him  out  a  dozen  times;  ye 
did  two  men's  work  'n'  got  a  boy's  wages  — 

"Bosh!  You  don't  know  anything  about  it,  'Liph,"  said 
Nat,  good-humoredly;  "wait  a  minute,  will  you?  I  think 
there's  somebody  outside."  But  'Liph  enjoyed  the  deaf 
man's  advantage;  he  went  on  talking,  and  was  talking  still 
when  Burke,  finding  the  place  empty  after  all,  came  back. 

" — Ye  ain't  anyways  beholding  to  the  Duceys  'n'  th' 
rest  uv  'em  that  7  kin  see.  Ye  ain't  got  any  call  ter  give  up 
what's  yourn  to  them,  ner  ter  be  so  tender  uv  'em  —  'less'n 
you're  goin'  ter  marry  that  little  girl  —  that  little  Francie 
Blake,  like  somebody  was  tellin'  me.  Is  that  so,  Nat?" 

"That's  nobody's  business  but  mine,"  shouted  out  Mr. 
Burke,  fiercely,  finding  himself  all  at  once  extremely  warm 
about  the  ears  —  "and  hers,"  he  added  hurriedly. 

"Well,  there!  I  didn't  mean  no  harm  askin'.  It's  jest 
what  I  heerd  somebody  say.  Folks  will  talk,  y'  know.  They 
talked  like  all-possessed  'bout  you  'n'  th'  minister's  girl. 
But  'bout  yer  proputty  - 

"I'll  tell  you  what,  'Liph,  I'll  wait  anyhow  till  these  Allen 
claims  are  settled,  and  see  how  they  turn  out.  They're  all 
located  in  the  Refugee  Tract,  too,  you  know,  and  it's  very 
much  the  same  sort  of  case,"  said  Burke,  glad  to  return  to  the 
first  subject;  "and  after  that,  if  I  feel  encouraged  —  " 

"Lordy,  Nathan,  they'll  be  pottering  along  with  them 
Allen  heirs  from  now  till  dqomsday  —  they've  ben  at  it  two- 
three  years  already!"  ejaculated  'Liph,  in  dismay. 

"Well?"  said  the  other,  grinning;  and  Williams,  seeing 
the  joke,  had  to  grin,  too. 

"  'Twouldn't  be  that  way  with  yourn,  though,"  he  said, 
taking  his  leave;  "yourn's  lots  straighter  claim  'n'  what 
theirs  sets  up  to  be.  I  wisht  you'd  do  it,  Nat,  I  wisht  you 
would." 


CHAPTER  XX 
IN  WHICH  THE  GRANGER  CLAIMS  ARE  SETTLED 

MR.  BURKE  turned  again  to  his  occupation  of  sorting  out 
the  Marsh  papers  after  Williams's  departure  with  a  great  ap 
pearance  of  zeal  and  business,  so  that  Lewis,  presently  coming 
in  from  the  Court-House,  must  have  been  profoundly  im 
pressed.  But  I  believe  that  Nat  had  not  changed  docu 
ments  for  a  half-hour,  and  the  set  phrases  of  the  deed  of  sale 
which  happened  to  be  lying  under  his  eyes  all  that  time  con 
veyed  nothing  whatever  to  his  mind.  He  read  and  re-read 
mechanically  that  Hiram  Small  for,  and  in  consideration  of, 
the  sum  of  eight  hundred  dollars  ($800.00)  paid  to  him  by 
George  Marsh,  did  hereby  give,  grant,  sell,  convey,  and  assign 
to  the  said  George  Marsh,  his  heirs  and  assigns  forever,  the 
property  herein  named  and  described,  being  Lot  15  on  the 
plat  of  the  southwest  quarter  of  the  northwest  half  .  .  . 
known  as  McBride's  Half-Section  (No.  26)  .  .  .  sixty-two 
and  one-half  feet  fronting  on  High  Street,  and  one  hundred 
and  eighty-seven  feet  fronting  on  South  Street,  measured  in 
a  line  running  due  east  from  the  junction  of  the  above-named 
streets  to  Pickering's  Alley,  also  sometimes  called  Luther's 
Alley.  .  .  . 

And  how  on  earth  (he  thought)  had  that  rumor  about 
Francie  and  himself  been  started?  It  was  absolutely  with 
out  foundation  —  oh,  absolutely!  Ridiculous!  Unkind! 
Neither  one  of  them  was  thinking  of  such  a  thing  —  at  least  — 
It  must  be  pretty  widespread  to  have  reached  'Liph  Will 
iams;  but  Burke  &  Lewis  had  an  unusually  extensive  prac 
tice  among  the  country  people;  and  country  people  are 
active  gossips.  It  would  be  very  annoying  to  Francie  if  she 
should  hear  of  it  —  somebody  might  be  stupid  or  impertinent 
enough  to  blurt  it  out  to  her  face  in  just  this  same  way.  But 
he  would  protect  her  from  that  in  —  er  —  in  some  way  or 
other;  he  would  see  that  she  wasn't  made  uncomfortable. 
His  going  to  the  house  so  often  nowadays  doubtless  gave 

599 


600  NATHAN    BURKE 

color  to  the  report;  but  he  merely  went  on  business,  and,  good 
heavens,  if  people  could  only  see  her  when  she  met  him! 
How  she  treated  him,  how  indifferent  and  cool  and  unem 
barrassed  she  was  with  him  —  if  people  could  only  see  that, 
why  —  why,  they'd  soon  see  !  She  didn't  care  a  pin  about 
him,  except  for  old  times'  sake  —  heigh-ho!  Lewis  called  to 
him  from  the  outer  office,  and  he  roused  with  a  start  and  a 
guilty  feeling,  applying  himself  once  more  to  the  property 
herein  named  and  described  .  .  .  and  from  thence  due  north 
on  said  Pickering's  or  Luther's  Alley  sixty-eight  feet  and  five 
inches  .  .  . 

"Look  here,  this  must  be  yours.  Have  you  missed  any 
thing?"  asked  his  partner;  and  he  tendered  Burke  a  crum- 
pled-up  envelope  with  one  end  torn  off,  addressed  to  George 
Marsh,  Esq.  "It  was  lying  on  the  table,  but  the  postman 
didn't  bring  it,  for  it's  an  old  letter —  one  of  the  old  man's,  I 
suppose." 

"I  suppose  so.  There  are  dozens  here,  none  of  'em  of  any 
importance.  I'll  have  'em  seeded  around  all  over  the  whole 
place,  if  I'm  not  more  careful,"  said  the  other  and  looked  at  it 
carelessly.  He  was  thinking  of  something  which,  upon  the 
twentieth  reading  of  Hiram  Small's  deed  of  sale,  had  finally 
forced  itself  on  his  attention.  The  lot  on  the  corner  of  High 
and  South  was  now  owned  and  occupied  by  Mr.  Michael  Shea 
of  the  Golden  Eagle  Saloon  and  Billiard  Parlors,  with  a  very 
busy  front  entrance  on  High  Street,  and  a  no  less  busy  rear 
door  on  the  alley;  it  was  considered  one  of  the  best  (finan 
cially,  so  to  speak)  in  town,  and  worth  several  times  eight 
hundred,  or  eight  thousand  dollars,  Mr.  Marsh  himself  hav 
ing  sold  it  at  an  unheard-of  profit  ten  or  twelve  years  before. 
But  now,  as  he  read,  a  recollection  of  recent  litigation  con 
nected  with  Shea  and  his  Golden  Eagle  struggled  to  the  sur 
face  of  Burke's  mind.  Various  patches  of  property  across 
the  way  or  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  figured,  he  remem 
bered,  in  the  often-recited  claims  of  the  Allen  heirs;  there 
were  a  dozen  or  more  defendants  —  Governor  Gwynne,  who 
owned  that  piece  next  door  with  the  shoe  shop,  was  one, 
Joshua  Barker,  Dry-Goods  &  Notions,  another  —  Nathan 
could  not  at  the  moment  recall  all  the  names,  but  felt  certain 
that  Shea  was  one.  It  was  worthy  of  remark  that  the  Allen 
heirs,  under  the  judicious  guidance  of  legal  advisers  such  as 


THE   GRANGER   CLAIMS   ARE   SETTLED        601 

Messrs.  Wylie  &  Slemm,  without  doubt,  found  fault  only 
with  titles  to  the  most  valuable  and  centrally  located  prop 
erty  in  town,  and  brought  suit  by  preference  against  men  of 
wealth  and  note  —  or  notoriety.  "I  should  like  to  see 
Small's  abstract  —  it  must  be  here,"  Burke  thought,  search 
ing  amongst  the  long  legal  envelopes  and  bundles  tied  up  with 
soiled  ends  of  tape;  "old  George  said  he  had  kept  clear  of 
buying  anything  with  a  title  from  Allen  —  but  he  might  have 
forgotten.  The  old  fellow  did  forget  towards  the  last  of  his 
life.  These  Allen  heirs  wouldn't  be  worrying  around  with 
Shea  though,  unless—  "he  paused.  He  had  found,  not  the 
abstract,  but  another  paper  —  a  copy  of  a  deed  from  George 
Marsh  to  Michael  Shea  warranting  the  title  to  "  Lot  15  ... 
sixty-two  and  one-half  feet  fronting  on  High  Street  ..." 
and  all  the  rest  of  it.  "Goodness!"  ejaculated  Nat,  men 
tally.  He  shoved  the  papers  aside  to  make  room,  and  doing 
so,  came  again  upon  the  letter  Lewis  had  handed  him,  lying 
there  disregarded.  He  picked  it  up. 

The  jargon  they  talk  nowadays  of  thought-transference, 
psychic  influence,  telepathy,  and  so  on  would  have  been  un 
intelligible  to  us  thirty-odd  years  ago;  we  were  not  dream 
ing  of  explaining  the  miracles  of  coincidence  by  any  such 
elaborate  method  or  in  such  magnificent  terms;  otherwise 
Mr.  Burke,  notwithstanding  a  somewhat  sceptical  -turn, 
might  have  been  converted  to  the  occult  creed  then  and 
there.  He  put  to  one  side  the  warranty  deed  which,  if  a 
genuine  copy  of  one  actually  existing,  he  knew  to  be  in  the 
circumstances  a  matter  of  some  gravity;  and  he  took  up 
the  letter  which  he  believed  to  be  of  no  importance.  As  it 
happened,  in  his  position  of  Mr.  Marsh's  executor,  he  must 
have  known  all  about  both  deed  and  letter  within  a  very 
short  time,  even  if  he  had  never  found  or  seen  these.  But 
that  these  acts  of  his  should  fall  so  pat  together  startled  him 
then,  and  does  a  little  now.  As  he  drew  the  letter,  which  was 
torn  in  places,  and  much  creased  and  rumpled,  from  the  en 
velope,  there  fell  out  a  bit  of  note-paper  with  a  neat  black 
edge  of  mourning  and  a  line  or  two  in  Mrs.  Ducey's  fine 
Italian  script:  "  This  letter  was  in  my  uncle's  hand  when  he 
was  taken  sick.  It  must  have  got  separated  from  the  others 
in  the  desk  somehow.  We  have  just  found  it.  Please  come 
up  this  evening  and  explain  what  it  means.  Anne  M.  Ducey." 


602  NATHAN   BURKE 

Burke  regarded  it  vaguely ;  it  did  not  strike  him  until  later  that 
this  note  was,  in  its  way,  much  more  mysterious  than  any 
thing  that  had  yet  happened.  The  letter  was  from  Shea's  at 
torney.  Although  they  had  straightened  it  out  and  smoothed 
it  into  some  semblance  of  tidiness  it  still  bore  the  marks  of  old 
Marsh's  strong  clutch.  Death  had  surprised  him  in  the  most 
familiar  act  and  posture  of  his  life;  his  utter  thought,  the  final 
effort  of  his  will,  must  have  been  concerned  with  this  alone. 
It  was  like  a  piece  of  drama,  strangely  significant  and  ap 
propriate. 

The  young  man  —  young  man,  indeed!  Nat's  head  was 
fast  turning  gray,  prematurely,  to  be  sure,  but  still  it  was 
nearly  gray,  and  he  felt  very  old,  sedate,  and  settled;  I  think 
it  is  time  to  stop  putting  that  adjective  to  his  name  —  Mr. 
Burke,  I  say,  was  so  preoccupied  with  his  recent  discoveries, 
and  the  really  curious  accident  of  their  following  so  close  one 
on  the  heels  of  the  other,  that  he  finished  his  work  and  went 
to  his  rooms  (where  he  lived  now  in  some  state  and  opulence) 
and  ate  his  supper,  and  made  an  uncommonly  neat  toilette, 
and  was  on  his  way  to  the  Duceys'  with  the  letters  in  his 
pocket,  all  without  its  once  having  occurred  to  him  that 
the  lady's  note  was  a  sufficiently  singular  business  in  itself. 
As  he  walked  up  the  path  to  the  Ducey  front  door,  it  came 
into  his  head  for  the  first  time  to  wonder  where  that  letter 
came  from,  and  how  long  he  had  had  it?  It  must  have  been 
with  the  other  papers;  in  that  case  Mrs.  Anne  had  written 
some  days  ago,  for  he  had  had  them  at  the  office  almost  a  week. 
She  would  think  he  had  shown  an  outrageous  indifference  and 
disrespect  —  Whew !  That  it  had  been  mislaid  and  only 
found  to-day  wouldn't  excuse  him  —  Whew  !  She  would  be 
ready  to  petition  the  court  to  appoint  another  executor  if  he 
did  not  display  more  diligence  and  care,  he  thought  with  a 
laugh. 

Although  it  was  not  more  than  three  weeks  since  Mr. 
Marsh's  death,  Nat  fancied  the  house  and  place  had  al 
ready  taken  on  a  look  of  prosperity  and  the  indefinable 
reserve  of  a  private  residence;  he  understood  the  boarders 
had  been,  or  were  presently  to  be,  dismissed.  And  only 
yesterday  William  appeared  in  a  subdued  splendor  of 
rich  new  mourning,  a  black  satin  waistcoat,  a  new  tall 
hat.  Poor  William!  I  believe  a  handsome  allowance  for 


THE   GRANGER   CLAIMS   ARE   SETTLED         603 

clothes  and  pocket-money  was  all  he  ever  got  —  certainly 
it  was  all  that  was  safe  to  let  him  have  —  out  of  the  Marsh 
inheritance.  He  used  to  go  about  talking  in  those  large 
phrases  of  which  he  was  so  fond  about  "our  estate"  and 
"our  plans";  and  was  as  ornamental,  fluent,  and  useful 
at  banquets  and  vestry-meetings  as  in  the  first  days  of  his 
career;  and  Mrs.  Ducey  made  him  most  happy  and  com 
fortable,  I  am  sure.  But  the  fact  is,  the  honest  gentleman 
had  no  longer  any  voice  or  authority  in  their  affairs;  he  sat  at 
the  head  of  his  table  and  carved  the  meat;  and  put  a  silver 
dollar  in  the  collection-plate  Sunday  mornings ;  and  listened 
gravely  when  business  was  discussed  in  the  family  circle,  and 
signed  his  name  where  he  was  told;  and  was  quite  without 
cares  and  responsibilities.  His  wife,  to  the  astonishment  of 
Nat  Burke  —  who  managed  her  property  for  years  —  kept  a 
pretty  good  grip  on  her  gear.  Some  underlying  vein  of  old 
Marsh's  thrift  and  caution  came  to  the  surface!  in  her;  she 
was  not  shrewd  —  or  not  nearly  so  shrewd  as  she  thought 
herself  —  but  she  was  honest  and  domineering;  and,  except 
as  regarded  her  son,  uncompromisingly  stingy  as  only  a 
woman  can  be.  Both  William  and  Anne  have  been  gone  this 
long  while  now;  and  as  for  the  property,  who  knows  what  has 
become  of  it?  We  heap  up  riches  and  cannot  tell  who  shall 
gather  them. 

It  was  without  any  such  gloomy  reflections,  however,  that 
Burke  went  up  the  walk.  He  was  picturing  to  himself  with 
comic  dismay  Mrs.  Ducey's  face  and  manner  upon  seeing 
him;  and  was  correspondingly  surprised  at  being  received 
with  an  appearance  of  anxiety  and  interest,  but  no  resent 
ment.  Mr.  Ducey  was  not  in  the  parlor;  he  seldom  came  to 
these  conferences.  But  Burke  was  acutely  conscious  of 
Francie  sitting  behind  the  lamp  in  shadow  with  her  black 
skirts  sweeping  into  the  other  shadows,  her  hands  lying  in  her 
lap,  and  her  averted  cheek  and  the  turn  of  her  neck  all  a  kind 
of  soft,  warm  white;  her  deep  brown  hair  packed  and  twined 
at  the  back  of  her  head  looked  almost  black;  ladies  wore  a 
little  white  collar  about  the  base  of  the  throat  clasped  with 
some  sort  of  brooch  or  pin  in  front,  in  those  days,  which 
showed  off  the  set  of  the  head  and  neck,  and  was  a  pretty 
fashion,  I  used  to  think.  At  least,  it  looked  well  on  Francie. 
Nathan  made,  his  bow  to  her  in  a  sudden  distracting  fluster  of 


604  NATHAN   BURKE 

thought;  but  if  his  manner  betrayed  confusion,  it  mercifully 
passed  unnoticed,  for  Mrs.  Ducey  began  to  speak  earnestly 
almost  before  the  ordinary  greetings  were  uttered. 

"Well,  Nathan,  you've  got  that  letter  that  Shea  man,  or 
whatever  his  name  is,  wrote  to  Uncle  George?  He  wanted  to 
go  to  law  or  make  Uncle  George  pay  him  something  —  dam 
ages,  or  something,  wasn't  it?  I  couldn't  make  out  what 
it  was  all  about,  of  course,  but  I  knew  you  ought  to  see  it  at 
once." 

"  I'm  sorry  I  didn't  come  across  it  till  to-day.  I  must  have 
dropped  or  mislaid  —  "  Burke  was  beginning  apologetically 
when  she  interrupted  him  with  a  peremptory  gesture. 

"I  know  —  it  can't  be  helped,  and  I  don't  suppose  it's  a 
hanging  matter,  anyhow.  Only,  of  course  everything  about 
Uncle  George's  business  ought  to  be  attended  to  promptly,  I 
know.  But  the  letter  must  have  got  mixed  in  with  some  of 
his  other  things  —  I  don't  believe  that  Woolley  woman  is 
much  of  a  housekeeper,  anyhow.  Uncle  George's  room  was 
in  the  worst  disorder.  Was  the  letter  important?  I  mean, 
was  it  just  Uncle  George's  private  affair,  or  has  it  got  some 
thing  to  do  with  us?" 

Burke  got  it  out  and  explained.  "I  don't  know  Shea's 
lawyer,"  he  said,  when  he  had  made  her  understand  as 
nearly  as  he  could  the  nature  of  the  Allen  claims.  "I  mean 
to  go  around  to-morrow  and  see  him  about  this.  Shea 
thinks  he  can  come  on  your  uncle  —  and,  of  course,  on  his 
estate  —  for  whatever  loss  he  has  sustained  through  this 
Allen  litigation,  because  of  Mr.  Marsh  having  warranted 
his  title.  Now  —  " 

"Well,  I  do  think  of  all  things  the  law  is  the  funniest!" 
ejaculated  Mrs.  Ducey.  "First  the  Small  man  buys  of  the 
Allen  man,  and  then  Uncle  George  buys  of  the  Small  man, 
and  then  this  nasty,  saloon-keeping  Shea  buys  of  Uncle 
George  —  it's  just  like  that  Chinese  ivory  carving  Jimmie 
Sharpless  sent  me,  one  ball  inside  another  ball  till  you  get 
down  to  a  real  little  bit  of  a  one  inside  them  all.  I  don't 
know  what  Uncle  George  wanted  to  sell  to  a  saloon-keeper 
for;  he  ought  to  have  sold  to  some  respectable  person.  And, 
anyway,  the  Small  man  is  just  as  much  to  blame  as  anybody 
else;  why  don't  they  hunt  him  up  and  sue  him?  I  can't 
imagine  what  Uncle  George  could  have  been  thinking  of  - 


THE   GRANGER   CLAIMS   ARE   SETTLED      605 

he  must  have  known  giving  any  kind  of  warrants  like  that 
would  make  trouble.  And  here  all  these  years  we  have 
been  thinking  he  was  such  a  fine  business  man!" 

"He  supposed  the  title  was  perfect  at  the  time,  Mrs. 
Ducey.  Nobody  had  questioned  it,  and  he  must  have  held 
that  property  for  years.  And  for  that  matter,  from  what  I 
hear,  I  should  be  inclined  to  think  that  all  these  titles  in 
dispute  are  good.  But  that's  got  nothing  to  do  with  Shea's 
complaint  against  your  uncle,  you  know  —  for  the  time 
being,  at  any  rate." 

"Well,  why  didn't  he  begin  long  ago  when  the  Aliens  first 
began  their  fussing?" 

Nathan  didn't  know;  he  thought  it  likely  Shea's  lawyer 
advised  against  it.  "He  may  have  wanted  Shea  tr  wait 
until  the  Allen  claims  were  farther  along,  before  beginning  an 
other  suit.  I  am  sure  your  uncle  had  forgotten  all  about  the 
warranty.  This  letter  probably  surprised  him  very  much." 

"Poor  Uncle  George!"  said  Francie,  with  a  quick  little 
sigh;  "he  was  so  alone."  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  spo 
ken;  and  also  she  was  the  only  one  amongst  his  grateful 
heirs  whom  Burke  ever  heard  express  any  feeling  even  re 
motely  approaching  regret  in  connection  with  old  George 
Marsh.  Mrs.  Ducey  looked  up,  suddenly  horrified. 

"Nathan,  you  don't  think  it  could  have  given  Uncle 
George  such  a  shock  he  had  that  stroke,  do  you?" 

"Oh,  hardly  that.  Mr.  Marsh  was  used  to  business  deal 
ings.  Of  course,  we  all  know  he  had  fallen  off  a  good  deal 
recently;  he  wasn't  the  man  he  had  been.  But  even  so — •" 

"Well,  I  wish  it  had  all  happened  before  he  died,  and  then 
he  could  have  attended  to  it  himself,  and  we  wouldn't  have 
had  all  this  worry,"  said  Anne,  nervously;  "will  it  take  a 
great  deal  of  money  to  —  to  have  the  lawsuit  ?  Or  hadn't 
we  better  pay  the  man  right  off  and  be  done  with  it?  It 
won't  take  everything  we've  got,  will  it?"  She  looked 
around,  pitiably  worried.  "I  —  I  wish  I  hadn't  told  them 
all  I  wasn't  going  to  take  boarders  any  more.  But  they 
haven't  all  found  another  place  yet  — 

"Oh,  don't  worry,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  said  Nathan;  her  dis 
tress  and  anxiety  were  such  nobody  could  have  had  the 
heart  to  smile.  "This  is  only  an  annoyance,  and  I  think  I 
can  fix  it  up  with  Shea  so  that  it  won't  be  too  costly  — " 


606  NATHAN    BURKE 

"I  think  it's  too  mean!  Just  when  we  thought  we  were 
going  to  be  comfortable  at  last  to  have  this  turn  up,"  Mrs. 
Ducey  said,  angry  and  aggrieved  and  helpless;  "you  talk 
about  settling  it  up,  but  lawyers  are  so  tricky  you  never 
know  what's  going  to  be  the  end  of  anything.  They  always 
get  every  cent  of  the  money,  no  matter  how  the  case  turns 
out.  Oh  —  I  —  I  didn't  mean  you,  Nathan,  of  course.  I 
meant  it's  the  rule  with  lawyers,  everybody  says." 

"It  doesn't  make  any  difference  to  Nathan  what  you  say. 
He  knows  everything  we've  got  ought  to  be  his,  anyhow!" 
said  Francie,  in  a  sharp,  clear,  and  resolute  voice.  She  got 
up  and  came  and  stood  between  them,  looking  somehow 
taller  and  older  in  her  black  clothes  and  sudden  assumption 
of  authority.  Her  hands  were  clasped  tight  across  her 
breast;  the  look  she  gave  Burke  held  something  almost  venge 
ful  in  its  pride  of  renunciation. 

As  for  that  gentleman,  he  sat  dumb  in  a  consternation  and 
bewilderment  as  great  as  if  she  had  exploded  a  bomb  be 
neath  their  feet.  He  could  not  even  think  connectedly; 
and  still  in  vacant  surprise,  he  heard  Mrs.  Ducey  exclaim: 
"Francie!  What's  that?  Why,  you've  gone  crazy!" 

"It's  true,  I  tell  you!  Everything  Uncle  George  bought 
and  owned  around  here  belonged  to  Nathan's  grandfather, 
and  if  he  went  to  law  about  it,  he  could  get  it  every  bit  back ! " 
the  girl  proclaimed.  "I  heard  him  say  so  himself  —  or — • 
or,  at  least,  the  other  man  said  so,  and  you  didn't  say  you 
couldn't,  Nathan.  You  just  let  us  have  it  because  of  Uncle 
George.  If  you  think  I'm  crazy,  Aunt  Anne,  ask  him  — 
ask  Nathan!" 

"Francie!  You're  crazy!"  cried  her  aunt  again;  "what 
do  you  know  about  Nathan's  grandfather?" 

"Never  mind!  I  know  all  about  him.  I  heard  him 
talking  about  it  in  his  own  office  — 

"You  heard  who?  You  heard  Nathan's  grandfather 
talking!"  said  Mrs.  Ducey,  wholly  at  sea,  and  out  of  temper; 
"mercy,  Francie,  you  dreamed  it!  You're  talking  perfectly 
wildly  —  it's  not  sense  what  you're  saying!" 

"/  say  —  I  —  heard  —  Nathan  --  talking  —  about —  his 
—  grandfather  —  this  very  afternoon    to  —  another  —  man  — 
and  he  —     the  other  man,  I  mean  —  knew  —  all  about  it, 
too!"   said  Francie,   separating  her  words  with   a  savage 


THE   GRANGER  CLAIMS   ARE   SETTLED      607 

distinctness;   "it  was  in  his  own  —  office  —  Nathan's  —  own 
office—" 

11  What!"  shouted  out  Mr.  Burke,  in  his  turn,  galvanized 
into  something  like  activity  by  this  statement;  "the  office? 
My  office?  You  haven't  been  at  my  office  for  days!" 

"Yes,  she  has,  yes,  she  has!"  cried  Mrs.  Ducey,  visibly 
perturbed;  "she  was  there  this  afternoon.  Didn't  you 
see  her?  I  sent  her  down  with  that  letter,  don't  you  remem 
ber?  Why,  how  did  you  think  the  letter  got  there,  Nathan?  " 
And  misconstruing  the  other's  look,  she  added  defensively; 
"There  wasn't  anybody  else  to  send.  I  couldn't  help  it. 
I  knew  that  letter  was  important,  and  Francie  just  had  to 
take  it  down." 

"This  letter?  Shea's  letter?"  babbled  Nat,  worse  off 
in  his  confusion  than  before. 

"Gracious,  yes!  That  letter.  What's  the  matter  now? 
Francie  said  you  were  busy,  and  she  left  it  for  you." 

"Well,  I  did.  I  left  it  on  the  table.  And  you  were  busy, 
Nathan,  I  heard  you  talking,"  said  Francie,  quite  calm 
now. 

"Well,  but  he  says  you  weren't  there;  he  couldn't  have 
seen  you  —  what  is  it  all  about,  anyhow?"  said  Mrs.  Ducey, 
in  an  exasperation;  "I  can't  make  head  nor  tail  of  what 
you're  saying.  And  I'd  like  to  know  where  you  got  all  this 
nonsensical  stuff  about  Nathan's  grandfather.  You  never 
said  a  word  to  me  about  it  before." 

"Because  I  didn't  know  myself  till  to-day.  And  then  I 
—  I  didn't  know  exactly  what  to  do.  I  thought  I'd  wait 
till  Nathan  came,  and  —  and  —  I  thought  I'd  wait  till 
Nathan  came,  you  see.  But  it's  all  true,  Aunt  Anne.  I 
heard  every  word  they  said.  The  other  man  wanted  Na 
than  to  get  his  property  back  — 

"Which  other  man?  What  other  man?  How  did  he 
happen  to  know  so  much?  Oh,  you  can't  have  got  it  right, 
Francie." 

"Ask  Nathan,  then!  Ask  him!"  said  the  girl,  forcibly, 
though  she  was  trembling;  "Nathan,  you  know  it's  so!" 

Burke,  whofhad  been  very  injudiciously  trying  to  force  upon 
his  muddled  wits  the  double  task  of  understanding  the 
letter  transaction,  and  remembering  just  what  he  and  Will 
iams  had  said  in  that  ill-timed  conversation,  gave  up  both 


608  NATHAN   BURKE 

efforts.  "Do  be  sensible,  both  of  you!"  he  remarked  gal 
lantly.  "I  —  I  mean,  that  is,  let's  try  to  get  at  what's 
happened.  How  did  you  happen  to  come  to  the  office  and 
go  away  without  my  seeing  you,  Francie?  What  did  you 
do  that  for?" 

"I  don't  care  if  I  did  listen.  I  don't  care  if  it  was  wrong 
to  listen.  I'm  glad  I  did.  There!"  she  said  vigorously. 
She  seemed  to  think  that  this  entirely  irrelevant  speech  an 
swered  him.  "But  I  just  couldn't  see  you  or  talk  to  you 
right  after  hearing  all  that  —  I  couldn't.  I  wanted  to  get 
away  somewhere,  and  think  first." 

"For  mercy's  sake,  what  did  the  child  hear?"  said  Anne, 
appealing  to  Burke  in  despair. 

Francie  began  to  explain,  a  little  brokenly  and  incohe 
rently:  "Aunt  Anne,  when  I  got  down  there  with  the  letter 
I  knocked  twice,  and  nobody  came  to  the  door,  but  I  could 
hear  them  talking,  so  I  knew  there  was  somebody  in.  I  —  I 
knew  Nathan's  voice  —  only  they  were  talking  very  loud  — 
awfully  loud  —  so  then  I  went  in.  And  there  wasn't  any 
body  in  the  front  room,  but  you  know  those  two  partitions 
one  on  each  side  with  'Burke'  on  one  and  ' Lewis'  on  the 
other?  The  talking  was  all  behind  the  '  Burke '  door,  and 
I  was  just  going  to  knock  when  the  other  man  —  he's  a 
deaf  man,  a  farmer  or  something,  at  least  he  looks  like  one, 
and  you  called  him  '  Liph '  -  -  he  began  to  ask  questions 
about  how  much  Uncle  George  had  left,  and  then  he  got  to 
talking  about  why  didn't  you  get  your  property  back  that 
was  in  the  old  Refugee  Tract  —  and  I  knew  that  was  where 
ever  so  much  of  ours  —  Uncle  George's,  I  mean  —  was, 
and  —  and  I  don't  know  why,  I  didn't  knock.  I  listened. 
He  was  talking  so  loud,  anybody  could  have  heard  outside 
in  the  street  almost.  You  had  to  talk  loud,  too,  to  make  him 
understand.  I  can  remember  every  single  thing  you  both 
said  -  "  and,  in  fact,  at  this  point,  she  repeated  the  whole 
of  Williams's  talk  and  Burke's,  word  for  word,  from  first  to 
last,  with  amazing  accuracy.  "And,  of  course,  the  longer 
I  stood  there  listening,  the  worse  it  made  it,"  she  finished 
ingenuously;  "I  —  I  had  to  go  away  without  your  seeing  me. 
And  I  wanted  to  think,  anyhow.  And  you  looked  as  if  you 
might  be  angry  if  - 

"I  looked  as  if  —  but  how  did  you  know  how  I  looked?" 
interrupted  Burke. 


THE   GRANGER  CLAIMS   ARE  SETTLED      609 

"I  wanted  to  see,  and  there  was  a  knot-hole  in  the  parti 
tion,  only  it  was  too  high  up;  I  —  I  climbed  on  the  table 
and  looked  through,"  said  Francie,  scarlet,  but  honest. 

Mr.  Burke,  surveying  her,  exercised  a  self-control  of  which 
he  is  to  this  moment  and  instant  proud;  he  knew  if  he 
laughed  she  would  never  forgive  him.  But  Mrs.  Ducey,  who 
had  sat  silent  through  the  recital,  now  spoke  in  a  strained 
voice. 

"Is  all  that  true  about  your  grandfather,  Nathan?  I 
don't  know  anything  about  the  law;  you  know  that. 
Please  just  tell  me  in  a  plain  way  if  it  is  really  all  yours  — 
everything  that  Uncle  George  bought  in  that  tract,  I  mean. 
We  don't  want  anything  that  doesn't  rightfully  belong  to 
us.  I  mean  by  right,  I  don't  mean  by  law.  We'd  rather  you 
took  whatever  ought  to  be  yours.  7  owe  you  still,,  anyhow, 
for  what  you  did  for  my  Georgie.  I  —  I  meant  to  pay  you 
that  as  soon  as  we  began  to  have  a  little  more  money  —  there 
were  so  many  things  to  do  at  first,  you  know.  But  you  may 
as  well  tell  me  right  out —  it's  no  kindness  to  try  and  make 
it  easy  for  me.  If  all  that  land  was  your  grandfather's  and 
he  never  sold  it,  it  ought  to  be  yours." 

Burke  looked  down  at  her,  infinitely  touched.  I  trust  it 
will  not  be  taken  for  a  piece  of  idle  fine  talk  when  I  say  that 
if  at  any  time  in  his  career  he  could  have  had  his  inheritance 
for  the  lifting  of  a  finger,  he  would  not  have  taken  it.  But 
he  could  not  tell  Mrs.  Ducey  so;  that  would  have  been  only 
to  humiliate  still  further  that  brave,  and  proud,  and  upright 
spirit.  There  was  something  magnanimous  in  the  way  she 
trusted  to  his  own  magnanimity,  relied  on  his  truth  and 
fairness. 

"I'm  sorry  Francie  heard  all  this  talk,  Mrs.  Ducey,"  he 
said;  "not  that  it  was  wrong  for  her  to  listen,  or  did  any  real 
harm,  of  course;  we  should  probably  have  come  to  this 
sooner  or  later,  anyhow.  But  it's  a  pity  it  happened  this 
way.  'Liph  Williams  is  my  good  friend,  but  he  doesn't  know 
a  thing  in  the  world  about  my  'rights,'  as  he  calls  them; 
he  just  wanted  to  hear  himself  talk.  I  have  a  claim  in  law 
on  your  uncle's  estate;  in  right,  I  think  I  have  none  at  all. 
If  I  had  thought  otherwise,  I  should  have  spoken  about  it 
long  ago.  I  couldn't  be  satisfied  any  more  than  yourself 
to  push  a  mere  technical  claim.  That's  not  my  idea  of  what 
2n 


610  NATHAN    BURKE 

law  is  meant  to  do.     You  see,  we  think  very  much  alike  to 
that  point  —  so  much  alike  that  it  seems  to  me  there's  not 
mucrruse  our  talking  about  it.   We  understand  each  other- 
Mrs.  Ducey  looked  at  him  with  a  convulsed  face;    all  at 
once  she  burst  out  in  wild  tears.     "  You're  a  good  man  — 
oh,  you're  a  good  man,  Nathan  Burke! "she  sobbed  hysteri 
cally.     Francie  ran  to  her,  and  put  her  arms  around  her  with 
soothing  words. 

" She's  all  right  —  she'll  be  all  right  in  a  minute,  Nathan," 
she  said  hurriedly.  "I'll  take  her  to  her  room.  Come  and 
lie  down,  Aunt  Anne,  do  come;  you're  all  worn  out  and 
nervous  —  it's  my  fault  —  I  ought  to  have  thought  what  I 
was  doing.  Never  mind  —  you  can  talk  the  rest  over  an 
other  time  —  can't  she,  Nathan  ?  No,  no,  don't  go  away 
now  —  wait  till  I  come  back  —  I'll  be  back  in  just  a  little. 
Please  wait."  She  led  her  aunt  away,  leaving  Burke  alone 
in  wonder  and  concern;  he  could  hear  her  coaxing  and  sup 
porting  Mrs.  Ducey  up  the  stairs,  and  their  footsteps  over 
head. 

He  stood  waiting  for  a  while  uncertainly;  then  at  last 
sat  down  again  by  the  lamp.  Francie  might  have  some  fur 
ther  tragic  communication,  he  thought,  almost  with  a  smile 

—  her  manner  had  been  very  insistent.     And,  good  Lord ! 

—  he  said  inwardly,  with  a  gasp  —  suppose  she  had  heard 
'Liph's  final  remarks  !     But  a  moment's  reflection  convinced 
him  that  she  must  have  clambered  down  from  her  perch,  and 
gone  scampering  off  by  that  time.     He  would  never  know, 
at  any  rate  —  impossible  to  mention  it  —  that  is  —  he  felt 
himself  redden  at  his  own  thought.     He  got  up  and  went 
fidgetting  about  the  room  in  a  hardly  controlled  excitement, 
looking  at  the  pictures  on  the  wall,  the  gilt  "Garland  of 
Friendship"  and   other  gift-books  on  the   table,  Francie's 
sewing-basket,   and  some  kind  of  white  embroidery-work 
on  the  chair  where  she  had  thrown  it  down.     Just  as  he  got 
to  this  point,  she  came  back,  walking  into  the  room,  and  up 
to  him  with  a  strange  little  air  of  determination,  at  once 
defiant  and  accusing. 

"Is  Mrs.  Ducey  better  ?  Would  you  like  me  to  go  for  the 
doctor?"  Burke  asked  anxiously. 

•  "Aunt  Anne's  all  right.     I  told  you  she  would   be  all 
right  —  she  doesn't  need  medicine.     She's  only  nervous.     I 


THE   GRANGER   CLAIMS   ARE   SETTLED         611 

suppose  I  ought  to  have  told  her  about  this  differently  — • 
but  it  can't  be  helped  now.  She  had  to  know;  and  you  never 
would  have  told  her.  You  know  that!"  said  Francie,  with 
severity. 

"Well,  I  —  I  didn't  see  that  there  was  any  necessity  — J 

"Fiddle-de-dee!"  said  this  remarkable  young  woman, 
very  spiritedly;  "you  can't  tell  me  any  story  like  that,  Na 
than.  You  can't  talk  to  me  the  way  you  do  to  Aunt  Anne. 
You  know  very  well  that  all  that  land  was  your  own  grand 
father's,  and  ought  to  be  yours  this  minute,  and  would  be 
if  jfau'd  make  the  slightest  effort  to  get  it  — " 

"  You're  very  much  mistaken,  Francie,  "interrupted  Burke. 
"  I  don't  know  why  you  and  your  aunt  both  want  to  go  jump 
ing  to  conclusions  like  that.  You  seem  to  take  what  poor 
old  Williams  says  for  law  and  gospel.  Setting  aside  any 
question  of  right  or  wrong,  it  would  be  a  long,  difficult, 
tedious  matter  for  me  to  prove  any  claim  at  all.  It  would 
even  be  hard  to  furnish  legal  proof  that  Granger  was  my 
grandfather  — " 

"But  you  could,  though.     You  know  you  could!" 

"Well,  and  what  if  I  could  ?  I  don't  care  to.  I'm  thirty- 
one  years  old;  if  I've  got  along  without  the  Refugee  Tract 
all  this  while,  I  guess  I  can  finish  out  without  it,"  said  Na 
than,  not  able  to  understand  her  insistence. 

"That's  just  it  —  you  weren't  thirty-one  when  you  first 
found  it  out.  You  could  have  had  it  any  time  these  ten 
years,  only  you'd  rather  work  and  slave  and  pinch  than  go 
to  law  against  Uncle  George.  You  thought  you  were  behol 
den  to  him,  and  that's  the  real  reason  you  never  claimed  it, 
Nathan.  It's  just  as  that  man  said.  You'd  have  tried  to 
get  it  from  anybody  but  Uncle  George." 

"And  so  I  was  beholden  to  him,"  cried  out  Nat;  "and  I 
think  I  should  have  been  a  poor  sort  of  creature  to  have 
harried  him  with  law-suits;  there's  no  property  on  earth 
worth  it.  The  old  man  that's  gone  was  mighty  good  to  me, 
Francie.  You  don't  understand.  Mr.  Marsh  was  the  first 
friend  I  ever  had;  he  took  me  out  of  the  stable;  he  made 
me;  he — " 

"You  made  yourself,"  said  the  girl;  "anyhow,  you  don't 
owe  anything  to  the  rest  of  us.  We  never  did  anything 
for  you.  You  could  take  it  from  us.  You  could  take 


612  NATHAN   BURKE 

my  share  of  it,  if  you  don't  want  to  give  Aunt  Anne 
trouble - 

"Francie!" 

She  came  nearer  to  him  —  came  quite  close,  and  put  up  her 
two  hands  against  his  coat  unconsciously,  in  a  gesture  of 
entreaty.  "  Nathan,  please!  I  —  I  feel  as  if  —  as  if  we 
ought  to,  you  know  —  as  if  — 

"  Francie!"  said  the  young  man  again,  huskily,  and 
grasped  her  hands,  as  she  made  a  motion  to  withdraw  them 
with  suddenly  frightened  eyes.  He  held  them  against  his 
breast,  looking  into  her  face,  trembling. 

"  Don't,  Nathan,  please,  I- 

"  Francie,  I  have  to.  I  have  to  tell  you.  I  love  you." 
His  heart  raced;  his  throat  drew  together  so  that  he  could 
scarcely  get  out  the  words.  He  began  again:  "I  love  you. 
Sometimes  I've  thought  you  cared  for  me  a  little  —  not  the 
way  I  care  for  you,  of  course,  but  just  a  little.  There  isn't 
anything  about  me  to  make  a  woman  love  me,  I  know  that. 
But  I  ask  you  to  marry  me,  even  so;  even  if  you  only  care 
a  little.  Will  you,  Francie  ?" 

It  came  in  a  broken  and  unnatural  voice;  it  was  not  at 
all  what  he  had  meant  to  say;  neither  were  the  time  and 
place  as  he  had  planned  them;  for,  I  may  as  well  confess  it, 
poor  Nat  had  rehearsed  this  event  a  score  of  times,  since  he 
first,  with  longing  and  uncertainty,  began  to  wonder  if  it  ever 
could  be  possible.  He  waited  in  a  miserable  suspense.  She 
did  not  shrink  from  him  now,  nor  try  to  take  her  hands 
away;  she  stood  with  her  head  drooped  a  little.  Then  she 
spoke  at  last,  as  brokenly  as  he  —  "Oh,  Nathan,  you  are 
so  —  so  — ''  and  suddenly,  neither  of  them  knew  how,  she 
was  in  his  arms  with  a  kind  of  sob,  and  her  face  against  his 
shoulder!  Burke's  arm  tightened  about  her  little,  slim, 
soft,  and  yielding  shape  with  an  impulse  that  the  next  instant 
shamed  him,  yet  it  was  out  of  his  control;  he  put  his  lips 
against  her  pretty  hair;  he  was  afraid  to  kiss  her,  until  she 
lifted  her  face. 

After  a  while  he  said:  "Do  you  know  what  you  made  me 
think  of  just  now  when  you  were  insisting  on  my  taking 
your  share  ?  You  made  me  think  of  the  very  first  time  I 
ever  saw  you,  and  you  wanted  to  give  me  your  quarter-dol 
lar —  all  the  money  you  had.  Do  you  remember?" 


THE   GRANGER  CLAIMS   ARE  SETTLED        613 

"Well,  I  had  my  way,  too,  didn't  I?"  said  Francie,  a 
tender  mischief  lighting  her  eyes;  "I  made  you  take  it. 
Isn't  this  it  on  your  watch-chain?  I've  always  liked  to 
think  you  had  that,  Nathan." 

Burke  was  astonished.  "I  thought  you'd  forgotten  all 
about  it!"  he  said.  "Once  I  said  something  to  you  about  it, 
and  you  —  you  didn't  seem  to  like  my  mentioning  it.  So 
I  never  did  again." 

"Nathan,"  said  Francie,  again;   "you  are  so  —  so — !  " 

"Well,  what  is  it  that  I  am  ?     You've  said  that  before  —  " 

"Why,  it's  just  that  you  never  seemed  to  know.  You  just 
wouldn't  let  yourself  see,  even  when  you  —  when  you 
wanted  to.  It  was  —  it  was  always  you,  Nathan.  I  —  I 
never  thought  about  anybody  else.  It  was  always  you  from 
the  beginning,  I  think.  Don't  you  remember  how  I  cried 
that  time  when  you  went  away  to  Uncle  George  at  the 
store  ?  I've  wondered  that  you  didn't  understand." 

"Why,  you  were  only  a  little  girl,  then,"  said  Nat,  not 
quite  able  to  believe  this,  in  spite  of  her  dear,  earnest  face. 
"How  about  all  those  little  boys  that  used  to  come  mooning 
around  and  load  you  up  with  pop-corn  balls  and  molasses 
candy  and  stuff  ?  I  had  to  shoo  'em  off  the  place.  And 
when  you  grew  up  — 

"I  sent  them  all  off  —  I  never  cared  for  one  of  them,"  she 
interrupted,  flushing  brightly. 

"I  thought  they  weren't  any  of  them  good  enough  for 
you,  Francie.  Except  Jim  Sharpless — " 

"Who  told  you  that?"  said  the  girl,  quickly.  "I  never 
said  a  word  to  anybody  about  —  about  —  I  mean  when  men 
wanted  me  to  marry  them,  Nathan.  I  never  told.  Girls 
do  —  some  girls.  But  I  wouldn't.  How  did  you  know?" 

"He  told  me  himself.  Poor  Jim! "  said  Burke.  And  they 
were  both  gravely  silent  a  little.  "He  said  he  thought  there 
was  somebody  else,"  said  Burke,  at  last,  with  a  faint  sting  of 
j  ealousy .  ' '  Was  there  ? ' ' 

"  It  was  you,  Nathan.  It  was  never  anybody  but  you. 
When  you  went  away  to  the  war,  I  thought  —  I  thought  I'd 
never  live  through  it.  I  used  to  look  in  the  glass  and  wonder 
why  my  hair  didn't  turn  gray.  When  I  gave  the  flag  to 
your  company,  you  know  —  I  don't  know  how  I  did  it.  I 
felt  as  if  I  were  made  of  glass,  and  everybody  could  see  right 


614  NATHAN    BURKE 

through  me,  and  knew  what  I  was  thinking  and  feeling  when 
I  stood  up  there  on  the  porch  and  gave  it  to  you.  There 
was  a  man  —  never  mind  who  —  he  was  with  you  —  that 
came  and  asked  me  to  be  engaged  to  him  that  morning. 
And  it  was  the  third  time,  and  I  was  so  weary  and  sad  and 
—  and  bitter,  I  suppose  —  I  was  hateful  to  him.  I  told 
him  I  couldn't  bear  him,  and  please  go  away  and  leave  me 
in  peace.  I  never  wanted  to  see  him  again.  So  he  went  away, 
hanging  his  head.  He  was  killed  afterwards  in  one  of  those 
skirmishes  you  had  somewhere  —  and,  oh,  Nathan,  that 
made  me  feel  so  —  so  —  I  might  have  been  a  little  kinder 
to  him.  I  wish  I'd  been  a  little  kinder  to  him,"  said  Fran- 
cie,  her  eyes  filling  with  remorseful  tears;  "but  everything 
seemed  to  be  going  at  cross-purposes,  and  nobody  cared  for 
the  right  person,  somehow.  When  you  marched,  I  ran  away 
from  them  all  at  the  house,  and  watched  you  go  all  by  my 
self.  You  didn't  see  me.  But  the  other  man  did  —  poor 
fellow!  And  then  afterwards  when  the  news  came  about  the 
way  you  did  at  Monterey  and  Chapultepec  and  everywhere, 
I  was  so  proud.  I  thought:  'Well,  it  don't  hurt  for  me  to  be 
proud  of  him,  anyhow.  Nobody  knows  I  am.  It  doesn't 
hurt,  even  if  I  haven't  any  business  to  be  proud  of  him.  I 
always  knew  that  was  the  kind  of  man  he  was  —  She 

paused,  a  little  out  of  breath  with  the  hurry  of  this  speech, 
looking  at  him  both  shyly  and  wistfully,  the  warm  pink 
coming  and  going  in  her  cheeks  after  that  fashion  Nat  had 
always  so  loved  to  watch.  But  now  his  eyes  fell  before  the 
clear  truth  and  purity  of  hers. 

"I  —  I  wasn't  worth  all  that,  Francie,"  he  said  in  honest 
humility;  "I'm  not  worth  it  now.  It  isn't  that  I've  ever 
done  anything  I'm  ashamed  of  —  but  no  man  could  be  good 
enough  for  that  —  good  enough  for  a  woman  like  you  to  love, 
I  think." 

"Nathan,"  said  Francie,  in  a  queer  voice  somewhere 
between  tears  and  laughter,  "that's  just  like  you — just 
exactly  like  you!" 


CHAPTER  XXI 

EXEUNT  OMNES 

THIS  history  is  all  but  ended.  For,  as  most  such  his 
tories  go,  its  hero  having  arrived  at  middle  life,  some  success, 
a  tolerable  income,  and  a  very  great  and  undeserved  happi 
ness,  there  cannot  be,  in  conscience,  much  more  to  say  about 
him.  You  may,  if  you  please,  fancy  Mr.  Burke,  on  a  cer 
tain  fine  morning  in  early  spring,  sitting  down  to  his  break 
fast  —  of  which  he  cannot  eat  one  morsel  —  in  a  tremendous 
state  of  nervousness,  with  a  new  black  superfine  broad 
cloth  suit  about  the  cut  of  which  he  has  some  dark  sus 
picions,  and  a  new  white  waistcoat,  and  a  pair  of  agonizing 
new  boots,  and  a  new  plain  gold  ring  in  his  pocket  which  he  is 
in  mortal  terror  of  losing.  It  is  his  last  breakfast  at  the  board 
ing-house  table ;  he  spills  the  salt ;  he  knocks  over  his  coffee- 
cup;  he  grins  feebly  at  his  fellow-boarders'  jokes.  He  jumps 
and  turns  pale  when  somebody  rushes  in  to  announce  the 
arrival  of  Dr.  Vardaman  who,  in  his  quality  of  best  man, 
has  called  in  a  carriage  for  the  groom.  The  unhappy-look 
ing  gentleman  is  not,  in  fact,  about  to  wind  up  his  interest 
ing  career  under  the  guillotine ;  he  is  going  to  his  own  wedding 
in  church  before  the  whole  of  the  town  —  is  not  his  condition 
pitiable?  You  may  read  the  next  day  in  the  papers: 
"MARRIED  —  On  Wednesday  the  15th  inst.  at  Trinity 
Church,  by  the  Right  Reverend  Charles  Mcllvaine,  D.D., 
Frances,  only  daughter  of  the  late  Francis  and  the  late 
Cornelia  (Marsh)  Blake,  to  Nathan  Burke,  Esq.,  all  parties 
of  this  city."  And,  strange  to  say,  it  has  often  seemed  to 
Burke  as  if,  instead  of  ending,  his  life-story  only  began  in 
earnest  upon  that  fortunate  Wednesday  the  15th  inst.! 

And  so  they  were  married  and  lived  happily  ever  after! 
All  Nat's  dreams  came  true  —  or,  at  least,  enough  to  satisfy 
any  reasonable  man.  He  had  the  little  home  he  had  longed 
for  how  many  years;  his  old  musket  hung  at  last  over  his 

615 


616  NATHAN   BURKE 

own  hearth,  decorating  the  mantle  in  company  with  a  pair 
of  china  figures  simpering  at  each  other  in  highly  glazed 
pink-and-yellow  garments  —  ornaments  (begged  from  Mrs. 
Ducey)  of  which  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Nathan  Burke  were, 
for  some  reason,  very  fond.  And  it  was  under  the  shadow  of 
these  china  Lares  that  Nat  and  his  wife  sat  down  together 
to  read  a  letter  which  came  not  long  after  the  wedding,  and, 
in  part,  certainly  deserves  quoting  here.  It  was  a  far-trav 
elled  document,  having  been  more  than  two  months  on  its 
way;  perhaps  its  author  was  not  sorry  in  his  heart  of  hearts 
to  be  out  of  sight  and  sound  of  Francie's  wedding-bells,  al 
though  he  was  generously  glad  to  hear  of  his  friend's  happi 
ness,  and  had  already  written  them  both  most  kind  and 
hearty  letters;  and  sent  the  bride  a  present  of  wonderful  old 
Spanish  laces  fit  for  a  countess,  and  a  fan  and  a  high,  jewelled 
comb  which  she  bestowed  among  her  choicest  treasures. 

SACRAMENTO, 
New  Year's  Day,  1852. 
DEAR  NAT  (wrote  Jim), 

Since  my  last  to  you,  I  have  gone,  and  come  back  from, 
a  tour  up  Nevada  County  way,  and  along  the  diggings  - 
or  washings  —  of  the  South  Yuba,  and  all  its  little  tributary 
streams.  They  are  all  alive  with  gold-seekers — twice  as  many 
as  when  I  was  there  about  this  same  time  last  year,  and  five 
or  six  times  as  when  I  first  came  to  the  West.  And  notwith 
standing  that  everybody  has  been  prophesying  ever  since  the 
excitement  began  that  the  gold  would  inevitably  peter  out 
in  a  few  months  or  a  year  at  farthest,  they  seem  to  be  tak 
ing  out  as  much  as  ever,  with  more  continually  in  sight  — 
enough  for  the  whole  United  States,  and  the  whole  United 
States  is  coming  here  to  get  it!  The  feeling  that  it's  too 
good  to  be  true  and  can't  possibly  keep  on  this  way,  and  that 
one  must  make  hay  while  the  sun  shines  is  just  as  strong  as 
ever,  though;  and  every  mother's  son  of  them  all  digs,  spends, 
works,  plays  with  a  frenzied  energy.  I  don't  believe  any 
thing  like  it  was  ever  seen  since  the  world  began;  certainly 
the  old  fellows  who  came  pioneering  out  and  settled  up  Ohio 
fifty  years  ago  were  no  such  exuberant  lot;  yet,  barring  the 
gold,  the  conditions  of  life  must  have  been  a  good  deal  the 
same,  and  the  character  of  the  adventurers  themselves  not 


EXEUNT   OMNES  617 

very  different.  .  .  .  One  thing  you  may  be  sure  of:  not  all 
the  bonanza  fortunes  in  California  are  dug  out  of  the  ground, 
or  sluiced  out  of  the  rivers;  you  may  leave  all  that  manual 
labor  and  dirt  and  discomfort  to  others,  and  no  matter  how 
rich  they  strike  it,  your  score  may  be  even  in  the  end.  Run 
a  saloon,  run  a  day-and-night  poker  establishment,  run  a 
boarding-house  at  heaven-scaling  prices,  run  a  general  store, 
and  sell  boots  at  sixteen  dollars  a  pair,  pork  at  a  dollar  a 
pound  (mouldy;  Lord  knows  what  they'd  ask  if  it  were 
sweet!),  and  apples  for  seventy-five  cents  apiece  —  would 
anyone  ask  a  gold-mine  to  pay  better  ?  I  gave  a  dollar  for 
a  two-months-old  copy  of  the  New  York  Herald,  which  I 
got  of  my  friend  Mr.  Hamlet  Davis  who  keeps  a  store  on 
Deer  Creek  (about  fifteen  miles  south  of  the  River) ,  and  also 
runs  a  kind  of  unofficial  post-office,  not  having  any  legal 
appointment,  and  without  pay.  However,  Hamlet  will 
never  go  to  the  poor-house  by  reason  of  that  piece  of  public 
spirit,  as  it  brings  all  the  miners  between  him  and  the  Yuba 
to  his  store,  and  he  does  a  rousing  business  in  commodities 
at  the  scale  of  prices  I  have  quoted.  He  coyly  admitted  to 
me  that  he  was  making  more  money  than  the  average  miner. 

".  .  .  They're  hustling  each  other  for  elbow-room  all 
the  way  up  and  down  the  Creek,  and  they  all  got  to  eat  and 
drink,  you  know.  Of  course,"  he  added  philosophically; 
"the  country  will  be  cleaned  out  pretty  soon  at  this  rate, 
and  the  minute  the  miners  go,  I  got  to  go  too.  There  ain't 
anything  to  California  but  the  gold;  'tain't  any  good  for  a 
farming  country,  and  everybody  can  farm  back  in  the  States 
if  they  want  to,  anyhow,  and  live  easier  and  cheaper.  I 
calc'late  to  make  my  pile  before  she  busts  up  teetotally." 

This  is  the  way  they  all  talk.  To  hear  them,  one  would 
think  there  never  was  a  community  so  powerfully  impressed 
with  a  sense  of  the  ephemeral  nature  of  earthly  achievement. 
We  are  tolerably  strong  on  morals  anyhow  in  Nevada 
County,  contrary  to  popular  opinion  back  east,  and  the  usual 
habit  of  newly-settled  places.  In  the  main  we  are  more 
decent  and  law-abiding  than  some  of  the  counties  and  cities 
at  home  in  the  old  states  that  call  us  names.  At  any  rate, 
this  is  what  I  have  been  warmly  assured  by  Mr.  Davis  and 
others,  and  I  never  contradict  —  I  don't  want  to  make  myself 
unpopular  in  this  highly  moral  settlement.  I  already  ran 


618  NATHAN   BURKE 

some  risk  of  it,  not  being  a  miner,  or  store-keeper,  or  express- 
rider,  or  gambler,  or,  in  short,  practicing  any  recognized  or 
reputable  calling;  but  I  forestalled  unkind  criticism  (at  least, 
of  the  shot-gun  variety)  by  explaining  myself  liberally  to  all 
inquirers,  and  showed  Davis  my  last  article  on  the  inside 
sheet  of  the  Herald  to  his  great  interest. 

"Well,  now,  of  course  you  wanted  to  see  your  name  in 
print/'  he  said,  indulgently;  "why,  you  didn't  need  to  buy 
a  copy  just  for  that.  I'd  have  let  you  have  a  peek.  I  guess 
I'll  have  to  read  that.  Beats  me  how  you  can  ever  find 
anything  to  write  about  out  here!" 

I  told  him  I  should  like  to  write  about  him  if  he  didn't 
mind  —  at  which  he  first  looked  suspicious,  then  grinned 
broadly.  "You  want  to  bear  in  mind  the  Herald  comes  to 
camp  regular,  young  man,"  he  remarked.  And  went  on 
to  say,  more  seriously,  that  if  I  undertook  to  describe  any 
hold-ups,  or  shooting-scrapes,  or  claim-jumping  outrages 
and  so  on,  I  ought  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  these  wrongs 
were  always  righted  as  far  as  possible,  and  the  offenders 
sought  out  and  punished;  and  that  their  rough-and-ready 
justice  was  still  justice  quite  as  much  in  California  as  in  Con 
necticut.  "Once  in  a  while  the  men  get  excited  and  act  too 
quick,"  he  said  reasonably;  "but  they'll  mostly  listen  to  rea 
son.  I  guess  Nevada  County  ain't  the  only  place  on  earth 
where  guilty  folks  sometimes  go  free,  and  innocent  ones  get 
the  punishment.  You  can't  help  feeling  pretty  strong 
against  the  half-breeds  and  Mexicans  and  Chinese.  They 
ain't  white,  and  that's  all  there  is  to  it.  You  can't  treat  'em 
like  white  men  any  more  than  you  could  a  nigger.  And 
Mormons;  Mormons  are  bed-rock  in  my  opinion.  'Tain't 
their  fool  religion,  you  know.  It's  them  theirselves,  and  the 
way  they  live." 

I  said  most  people  would  be  surprised  that  there  wasn't 
more  irregularity  in  living,  all  things  considered.  But  I 
don't  know  of  a  place  where  a  decent  woman,  or,  in  fact, 
almost  any  kind  of  woman  could  be  more  sure  of  respect  and 
kind  treatment.  To  which  he  replied  rather  ambiguously 
that  there  were  mighty  few  women  anyhow;  three  over  at 
Selby  flat  (to  at  least  two  hundred  men!),  that  little  French 
widow  that  was  dealing  faro  down  at  Centre ville  now,  but 
she  used  to  be  in  Nevada  City;  and  all  the  rest  were  Mexican 


EXEUNT   OMNES  619 

or  Indian.  Here  he  had  to  break  off  to  go  and  serve  a  young 
miner  with  powder  and  shot.  It  seemed  to  me  they  had 
quite  a  long  dicker  over  it,  talking  in  low  voices;  and  when 
Mr.  Davis  came  back  he  was  absent  and  moody,  and  showed 
no  disposition  to  take  up  the  conversation  where  we  had 
left  off.  Not  until  I  was  about  to  saddle  up  and  leave  did 
he  return  to  his  former  geniality;  and  then  he  followed  me 
to  the  door,  and  asked  with  a  good  deal  of  interest  which 
way  I  was  going.  Upon  being  told  that  I  expected  to 
make  camp  on  Rock  Creek  that  evening,  and  keep  on  in  a 
general  north-east  direction  for  the  next  two  days,  till  I  got 
to  Kanaka  —  where  there  was  a  big  stampede  of  miners 
lately,  with  rumors  of  fabulously  rich  deposits  in  the  bed  of 
the  stream  —  he  first  looked,  I  thought,  a  little  queer,  hesi 
tated,  and  then  suggested  Scott's  ranch  as  a  good  place  to 
stop,  instead  of  camping  out  in  the  open  on  the  creek.  Why 
didn't  I  go  on  to  Scott's  ranch  ?  It  was  only  a  few  miles 
further,  and  old  man  Scott  would  be  glad  to  see  me.  Old 
man  Scott  remembered  me  from  last  year  —  often  talked 
about  me.  Why  didn't  I  go  on  to  Scott's  ?  I  said  Scott's 
was  too  far,  and  that  I  would  probably  strike  some  miner 
on  the  creek,  who  would  take  me  in;  if  not,  the  October 
nights  were  pleasant,  and  I  didn't  mind  being  outdoors. 
Well,  he  didn't  know;  it  was  mighty  wild  and  lonesome  up 
on  Rock  Creek.  "  Why,"  said  I;  "you  just  said  they  were 
hustling  each  other  for  elbow-room  up  there!" 

He  had  no  answer  for  that;  and  finally  let  me  go  with  a 
sort  of  I-wash-my-hands-of-it  air  at  once  dubious  and  an 
noyed.  So  that,  you  see,  Nat,  I  took  the  trail  with  a  pleas 
ant  feeling  of  being  in  the  wake  of  some  kind  of  adventure; 
and  so  I  was,  though  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  me  personally. 
I  suppose  it  was  as  much  Davis'  manner  that  put  the  idea 
into  my  head,  as  anything  he  said.  This  is  a  country  where 
everybody  most  religiously  minds  his  own  business,  and  he 
had  been  so  insistent  against  Rock  Creek,  when  ordinarily 
he  wouldn't  have  asked  or  cared  anything  about  my  plans, 
that  anyone  would  have  scented  mystery. 

Not  far  out  of  town  I  overtook  the  young  miner  who  had 
been  buying  the  powder  and  shot,  journeying  blithely  along, 
as  he  openly  told  me  on  my  dropping  alongside,  to  his  cabin 
on  the  creek.  There  was  nothing  mysterious  about  him, 


620  NATHAN    BURKE 

at  any  rate;  in  the  twelve  or  fifteen  mile  ride  he  told  me  all 
about  himself.  He  and  his  pardner  were  washing  with 
sluice-boxes,  and  what  they  call  a  "Long  Tom";  been  at  it  a 
year;  last  week  they  took  out  forty-one  and  three-quarter 
ounces  —  pretty  fair,  hey?  It  was  ever  so  much  better 
having  a  pardner;  you  didn't  get  so  lonesome.  When  he 
first  came  out  (from  Rhode  Island)  he  didn't  have  anyone  to 
live  with  him,  and  though  he  made  money  right  along,  he 
pretty  near  died  of  homesickness.  His  name  was  Jackson, 
and  his  pardner's  Anderson.  Anderson  was  older  than  him 
self,  a  fine  fellow,  a  splendid  fellow,  a  man  of  education,  you 
know,  from  Syracuse,  New  York.  He  liked  to  be  with 
people  of  education,  he  could  see  I  was,  etc.  He  was  very 
much  interested  to  hear  what  my  trade  was,  and  vastly 
pleased  with  his  own  powers  of  perception.  "I  knew  you 
were  an  educated  man!"  he  said  two  or  three  times  with 
pride;  "are  you  going  to  write  a  book  about  California  ?" 

I  said:  "I  don't  know  enough  to  write  a  book  yet,  but 
some  day  I  hope  to.  I  was  talking  to  Mr.  Davis  about  that 
when  you  came  in." 

He  gave  me  a  thoughtful  look.  "Yes.  That's  what  he 
said.  He  seemed  to  be  kind  of  afraid  of  what  you'd  write  to 
your  paper  about  —  about  the  way  it  is  out  here.  But  7 
don't  see  why  it  shouldn't  all  be  put  down,  good,  bad  and 
indifferent.  That's  what  I'd  do,  if  I  was  writing.  It  can't 
be  like  it  is  back  home;  we've  got  different  things  to  settle 
—  things  they  haven't  got  at  home  — 

And  I  thought  he  was  on  the  point  of  letting  me  into  some 
interesting  secret,  when  unluckily  we  hove  in  sight  of  his 
cabin,  and  the  educated  man  from  Syracuse  came  out  to 
greet  us. 

Anderson  was  another  good  fellow,  quite  as  pleasant  and 
open  in  his  talk  as  the  younger  man;  and  of  course  they 
asked  me  to  stay  the  night,  and  set  out  the  pot  of  cold  beans, 
and  made  tea,  and  fried  a  bit  of  pork  to  sop  our  bread  in, 
with  the  kindest  and  most  unaffected  hospitality  in  the 
world.  "I  make  the  bread,"  said  Jackson,  proudly;  "the 
boys  say  I  make  the  best  bread  of  anybody  on  the  Creek." 

It  was  while  we  were  sitting  at  supper,  the  twilight  begin 
ning  to  close  in,  and  a  star  or  two  coming  out  prettily  over 
the  pine-tree  tops,  that  all  at  once  with  a  rub-dub  of  hoofs 


EXEUNT   OMNES  621 

on  the  trail,  we  heard  several  men  ride  up.  The  two  partners 
simultaneously  set  down  their  tin  mugs,  and  looked  at  each 
other  and  at  me;  outside  the  riders  began  to  hail  them. 

"He  don't  know  anything  about  it,  of  course,"  said  Jack 
son  to  the  other  in  an  undertone;  "I  —  I  said  I'd  go,  you 
know." 

Anderson  said  he  wasn't  going  anyhow  —  he  didn't  believe 
he  wanted  to.  They  were  both  plainly  unsettled  by  my 
presence;  at  last  Jackson  went  out  to  talk  to  the  others, 
and  I  took  the  chance  to  say  frankly  to  Anderson  that  what 
ever  was  happening,  I  saw  I  was  in  the  way,  but  I  would  go 
on  to  Scott's  ranch  where  I  was  known,  and  be  just  as  much 
obliged  as  if  I  had  stayed  with  them.  He  demurred  hastily. 

"Oh,  you  needn't  to  do  that,"  he  said,  in  concern;  "we 
wouldn't  have  you  do  that.  And  besides  —  Scott's  ranch ! 
Lord  love  you,  the  whole  of  Scott's  ranch '11  likely  be  going 
along  themselves!  No  reason  why  you  shouldn't  come  too, 
stranger,  if  you  feel  like  it.  It's  been  kept  pretty  dark,  but 
as  long  as  you  know  this  much,  you  might  as  well  see  the 
rest,  seems  to  me.  Don't  want  you  to  think  we're  ashamed 
of  what  we're  doing,  anyway.  It's  all  square."  With  this 
invitation,  after  a  little  more  talk,  we  went  outside,  and 
saddled  up  again,  and  joined  the  party;  there  were  six  or 
eight  of  them.  It  was  so  dark  we  could  hardly  see  one 
another's  faces,  but  nobody  had  on  a  mask  or  any  kind  of 
disguise.  I  suppose  Jackson  had  accounted  for  me,  for  no 
one  questioned  my  being  with  them.  In  fact,  as  we  rode 
along,  we  received  so  many  additions  from  cabins  here  and 
there  that  I  should  think  there  must  have  been  between 
twenty-five  and  thirty  all  told.  We  struck  right  across  in 
the  direction  of  Round  Mountain.  There  wasn't  much 
talking;  nevertheless  we  went  along  without  any  effort  at 
secrecy.  I  kept  near  to  Anderson,  and  after  a  while,  when 
we  were  a  little  separated  from  the  rest  picking  our  way  up 
the  hill-side,  he  told  me  in  a  low  voice  what  it  was  all  about 
—  gave  me  an  outline,  that  is. 

"Things  have  got  to  be  pretty  bad,  before  we  can  afford  to 
take  any  notice  of  'em,"  he  said;  "live  and  let  live  is  our 
motto,  generally  speaking.  But  we've  got  to  draw  the  line 
somewhere.  I  don't  know  that  you've  been  here  long  enough 
to  hear  about  Holiness  Farm  —  it's  only  been  going  this  last 


622  NATHAN    BURKE 

year.  Man  came  and  located  on  Round  Mountain  ten  or 
twelve  months  ago;  he  didn't  appear  to  do  any  mining; 
just  settled  down  there.  It  got  around  first  he  was  a  hermit; 
then  some  said  he  was  some  kind  of  missionary;  then  there 
was  a  report  that  he  was  spreading  a  new  sort  of  religion 
among  the  Mexicans  and  Indians  and  Chinese  and  heathen 
generally.  Nobody  paid  much  attention  to  it;  we're  all 
busy,  and  a  religion  more  or  less  don't  make  much  difference 
here.  I  suppose  there're  forty  in  camp  —  but  mostly  no 
religion  at  all.  Presently,  however,  it  leaked  out  that  it 
was  only  the  women  his  reverence  was  converting.  That 
don't  ever  look  very  well.  They  went  up  there  in  droves  —  so 
they  say,  I  don't  know  anything  of  my  own  self  —  and  the 
place  being  lonely  and  off  to  itself,  nobody  knew  what  they 
did  exactly.  Nobody  paid  much  attention  to  that  either; 
if  Mr.  Missionary's  tastes  ran  to  half-breed  and  Digger 
women,  why,  it  was  low-down,  of  course,  but  none  of  our 
funeral,  you  understand.  It  seems,  though,  they  had  some 
kind  of  shindy  —  rites,  you  know;  and  all  the  sisters  had  to 
bring  tithes,  or  tribute;  that's  what  gave  Holiness  Farm  a 
black  eye,  as  you  might  say.  Because  these  Indian  women 
and  the  rest  would  loaf  around  the  camps  awhile,  then  bye 
and  bye  they'd  pike  off  to  Round  Mountain  with  a  little 
jag  of  dust,  or  a  good  steel  tool,  or  some  fellow's  clean  shirt, 
or  whatever  else  they  could  get  their  hands  on.  They're 
pretty  slick  thieves.  We've  missed  things  ourselves.  Some 
of  'em  live  up  there  and  do  the  work,  cook  and  wash,  and 
rock  a  little  for  gold  off  and  on  in  the  creek,  while  his  holi 
ness  sets  there  and  gets  fat.  Made  the  boys  kind  of  sore. 
'Tain't  decent  anyhow.  So  they've  about  made  up  their 
minds  to  invite  him  to  leave  —  him  and  the  squaws.  Time 
the  place  was  cleaned  out." 

All  this  information  he  delivered  in  that  manner  of  ironic 
humor  with  which  they  seem  to  meet  every  situation,  no 
matter  how  grave.  I  am  more  or  less  of  a  greenhorn  still, 
and  I  swear  I  don't  know  half  the  time  whether  they  are  in 
earnest,  or  only  having  a  little  fun  at  my  expense;  and  then 
again  I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  set  down  for  our  strongest 
national  characteristic,  the  disposition  to  levity  about 
serious  things,  and  to  a  perfectly  abysmal  seriousness  about 
trivialities!  " Inviting  him  to  leave"  might  mean  anything 


EXEUNT   OMNES  623 

from  a  piece  of  horseplay  to  lynching;  but  in  either  case, 
I  couldn't  do  much  but  look  on,  and  keep  my  mouth  shut. 
I  asked  Anderson  what  he  thought  the  missionary  could 
possibly  do  with  his  disciples'  "tithes"?  He  answered 
succinctly  that  he  " snaked"  the  dust  and  the  eatables  for 
his  own  use;  and  had  been  known  to  dispose  of  the  tools 
and  clothing  in  distant  camps  or  to  chance  wayfarers  — 
"  You  can  get  a  whaling  price  for  things  like  that,  if  you  know 
how,"  he  explained.  "At  least,  that's  what  we  suppose  he 
does.  Nobody's  ever  been  inside  his  cabin.  The  boys 
gave  it  that  name  —  Holiness  Farm;  seemed  kind  of  ap 
propriate,  hey?" 

We  arrived  there  in  about  an  hour,  the  last  part  pretty  stiff 
climbing,  so  that  we  had  to  dismount  and  tie  the  horses, 
and  make  our  way  through  the  brush  perhaps  three  hundred 
yards  on  foot,  spreading  out  to  surround  the  place.  They 
all  had  guns  or  revolvers;  I  had  left  mine  in  my  belt,  and 
forgot  it  when  we  started.  Jackson  and  I,  and  another  man 
whom  they  called  "  'Squire"  —I  didn't  hear  his  last  name 
—  kept  together.  The  place  was  very  quiet  and  dark  and 
peaceful,  no  dogs  around  to  give  warning,  just  an  ordinary 
cabin  in  a  clearing.  There  were  some  chicken-coops,  and  a 
lot  of  washing  hanging  out  on  a  line.  This  all  had  so  pas 
toral  and  harmless  a  look,  I  confess  to  some  misgivings  about 
Nevada  County  justice.  If  the  Holiness-Farm-ers  had  been 
having  some  kind  of  orgy,  chanting  incantations  over  a  pile  of 
skulls,  or  dancing  around  a  cauldron  of  witches'  broth,  it  would 
have  been  at  once  more  picturesque  and  more  convincing. 
However,  in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  (to  borrow 
and  debase  a  phrase)  the  scene  changed;  our  advance  had 
not  been  at  all  covert  or  stealthy,  and  as  we  stepped  out 
from  all  sides  into  the  open,  moonlit  space,  on  a  sudden, 
appalling  noise  crashed  forth  point-blank  in  our  faces;  jets 
of  fire  sprayed  from  the  cabin;  invisible  bee-like  missiles 
zipped  and  pinged  around;  the  mountains  shouted  back 
Homeric  echoes;  and  I  think  every  individual  "squaw" 
within  the  walls  must  have  let  off  a  screech  at  the  same  time 
she  pulled  the  trigger.  Holiness  Farm  was  "on"!  They 
expected  us,  and  in  times  of  peace  had  prepared  for  war  ! 

In  the  following  infinitesimally  brief  pause,  there  went 
charging  through  my  head  Colonel  Harney's  order  before 


624  NATHAN    BURKE 

the  batteries  at  the  Nino  Perdido,  to  "rush  'em,  boys,  before 
they  have  time  to  load  again!"  But  no  such  haste  was 
necessary;  I  was  the  sole  creature,  apparently,  to  take  our 
welcome  seriously;  the  whole  thing  was  as  inconsequent  as 
a  dream.  A  dying  turkey  —  the  only  person  injured  in  this 
struggle,  as  it  presently  developed  —  began  a  terific  quawking 
and  flopping,  and  all  the  poultry  at  once  chorussed  stentorian 
surprise  and  fright.  On  the  instant  the  pines  and  mountain 
sides  reverberated  laughter,  gay  profanity,  goblin  whoops 
and  jibes.  Invitations  to  try,  try  again,  Brigham!  advice 
on  the  proper  training  of  a  harem,  lively  unprintable  sug 
gestions,  mock  reproaches,  hailed  around.  A  torch  sprang 
up;  in  a  second,  somehow  or  other,  everybody  had  a  torch; 
and  men  swarmed  over  the  cabin,  burst  it  in,  swept  it  out, 
pots,  pans,  benches,  flour-barrels,  sides  of  bacon,  shovels, 
blankets  —  and  women  ! 

There  were  only  three  of  them  after  all,  a  Mexican  scream 
ing  and  praying,  and  two  Indian  women  terribly  frightened, 
but  silent,  poor  creatures,  after  their  kind.  They  looked  like 
all  the  rest,  dirty  and  barefoot  with  their  long  black  hair 
streaming  down  —  homely  as  sin !  Apart  from  a  little  hus 
tling,  nobody  offered  to  molest  them ;  and,  being  released,  the 
two  Indians  fled  into  the  brush  and  were  no  more  seen.  The 
Mexican  (who  appeared  to  be  a  well-known  character  in  the 
camps,  and  was  pleasantly  hailed  by  name,  Pepita)  crouched 
on  the  ground  whimpering,  among  the  chickens.  In  the 
meanwhile  the  hunt  went  merrily  forward.  I  took  no  part; 
it  wasn't  expected  of  me,  and  I  didn't  want  to  bungle  the 
business  by  interfering.  After  some  uproarious  rummaging, 
half  a  dozen  of  them  dragged  him  out  triumphantly.  They 
had  set  fire  to  the  cabin,  whether  by  accident  or  not  I  don't 
know;  nobody  cared  anyhow.  The  flames  went  soaring 
overhead;  there  stood  the  proprietor  of  Holiness  Farm,  with 
a  blanket  wrapped  around  him,  and  a  beard  like  a  prophet. 
I  believe  he  had  been  found  under  a  bunk  or  in  some  equally 
ignoble  posture;  and  his  first  words  in  a  shrill,  trembling 
voice  were:  "What  is  the  meaning  of  this  outrage?" 

One  or  two  of  the  men  collapsed  on  the  ground  and  lay 
and  rolled  over,  laughing;  they  all  crowded  near  swearing 
and  chuckling  to  get  a  look  at  him;  it  seems  he  rarely  let 
himself  be  seen  and  his  features  were  not  familiar  to  the 


EXEUNT   OMNES  625 

settlement.  I  took  a  look,  too,  but  merely  to  reassure  my 
self,  for,  Nathan,  I  knew  the  voice  or  the  manner  or  both 
the  minute  he  spoke.  It  was  George  Ducey. 

I  cannot  tell  why  I  was  not  more  surprised;  perhaps  I  had 
already  reached  the  limit  of  excitement.  The  surprise  came 
later,  when  I  sat  down  to  think  it  over  coolly.  At  the  time, 
there  was  something  weirdly  natural  about  it;  anything 
—  all  kinds  of  things  —  happen  in  California.  You  get  used 
to  it.  The  last  time  I  saw  George  was  on  the  wharf  at  Saint 
Louis  in  the  nipping  dawn,  scuttling  off  with  his  two  bunko 
ing  acquaintances.  The  underworld  had  received  him  — 
why  shouldn't  he  be  here  ?  Except  for  the  beard,  he  was  not 
much  changed;  and  was  as  scared  and  sneaking  and  pompous 
and  silly  all  at  once  as  you  would  expect  George  to  be.  I 
have  thought  since  that  he  has  advanced  considerably  in  the 
school  of  scoundrelism  since  the  old  days  of  his  first  essays; 
to  camp  in  the  Sierras,  and  get  a  lot  of  women  to  take  care  of 
him,  and  support  him  and  steal  for  him  —  the  exploit  shows 
force  and  originality.  George  was  always  something  of  a 
lady-killer,  you  remember. 

Somebody  sang  out  to  cut  down  the  clothes-line,  and  for 
one  horrible  instant,  I  thought  they  were  going  to  hang  him; 
in  fact,  I  believe  some  minds  did  glance  that  way.  But, 
"Born  to  be  drowned,  you'll  never  be  hanged"  —and  I 
think  George  had  better  look  out  every  time  he  crosses  water. 
They  only  tied  him  up,  and  put  him  aside  while  they 
gathered  up  the  household  goods,  and  completed  the  de 
struction  of  the  cabin.  Afterwards  there  was  a  court  held, 
with  a  regular  jury  drawn  by  lot,  and  the  "  'Squire"  presiding; 
it  was  brutally  funny.  The  court,  if  you  please,  appointed 
Anderson  to  defend  him;  and  he  got  up  and  made  a  sort  of  jo 
cosely  moderate  speech,  pointing  out  that  no  one  had  actually 
caught  the  prisoner  stealing  anything  with  his  own  hands, 
or  disposing  of  anything  that  could  positively  be  identified 
as  somebody  else's  property;  and  that  the  women  were 
notoriously  given  to  thieving  anyhow.  "That  was  about 
all  you  could  say  for  him,  you  know,"  Anderson  remarked  to 
me  afterwards.  "Anyway  you  can  put  it  in  your  book  that 
we  did  it  all  regular  and  according  to  form,  can't  you?" 

There  was  a  strong  feeling  in  favor  of  giving  him  twenty- 
five  lashes  on  the  bare  back,  and  turning  him  out  of  camp 
2s 


626  NATHAN    BURKE 

on  pain  of  hanging  if  he  should  ever  come  back  ;  some  petty 
thieves  over  at  Rose's  Bar,  they  tell  me,  have  been  thus 
served.  And  as  I  saw  them  coming  by  degrees  to  that 
decision,  I  —  well,  I  concluded  to  get  out !  I  knew  I  wouldn't 
be  missed.  If  ever  there  was  a  man  who  richly  deserved 
twenty-five  lashes  on  his  bare  back,  it  was  George  Ducey. 
But  I  couldn't  stay  to  see  it.  If  the  whipping  could  have  done 
him  any  moral  good  —  But  he  would  be  the  same  after 
twenty  whippings.  And  no  matter  how  much  he  suffered 
physically,  the  real  suffering  and  shame  and  distress  would 
be  for  the  decent,  humane  people  that  had  to  look  on.  By 
heavens,  Nathan,  since  I've  been  thinking  about  it,  it's  given 
me  a  new  and  painful  illumination  on  the  whole  subject  of 
punishment  for  criminals.  Something's  dreadfully  wrong 
somewhere. 

I  say  I  got  up  and  left  the  circle  just  about  as  the  jury  were 
retiring  behind  the  ruins  of  the  cabin  which  was  still  burn 
ing  slowly.  It  had  set  fire  to  the  underbrush  on  one  side, 
and  some  of  us  had  been  kept  busy  beating  and  tramping  it 
out,  for  a  fire  in  these  mountain-forests  during  the  dry 
weather  spreads  forever,  and  is  a  very  serious  matter.  I 
went  down  to  where  the  horses  were  tethered,  and  while 
I  was  bothering  about  in  the  darkness,  trying  to  find  my  own, 
there  was  another  great  outburst  of  yelling,  and  one  or  two 
guns  going  off  up  at  the  late  Holiness  Farm.  ''They're 
beginning!"  I  thought  —  and  it  was  a  pretty  nauseating 
thought,  Nat,  that  whip  coming  down  and  curling  and  writh 
ing  all  along  George's  bare  back  with  a  sting  like  a  snake. 
Gr-r-rr!  But  the  racket  kept  up;  everybody  seemed  to  be 
scattering  and  screeching.  "What  on  earth — ?"  I  won 
dered.  Then  one  man  after  another  came  threshing  through 
the  thickets,  swearing  and  fuming,  to  his  horse.  I  inquired. 
George  had  got  away! 

It  must  have  been  done  while  they  were  at  council.  I 
think  nobody  was  paying  much  attention  to  the  prisoner 
whom  they  all  knew  to  be  securely  tied ;  and  the  danger  from 
the  fire  had  further  helped  to  distract  us.  They  thought 
Pepita  must  have  crept  around  to  him  with  a  knife  and 
released  him.  She  was  gone,  too.  .  .  . 

Anderson  and  I  rode  back  to  his  cabin  together.  We  left 
a  posse  beating  the  woods,  but  Anderson  said  he  thought 


EXEUNT   OMNES  627 

they  hadn't  much  chance  of  catching  his  holiness;  the  Mexi 
can  woman  was  cunning  as  a  fox,  he  said,  and  probably  knew 
every  tree  and  bush  on  the  mountains  like  a  brother,  and 
could  walk  the  trails  blindfold;  they  must  have  had  ten 
minutes  start  or  more.  "  He's  good  and  scared  anyhow.  I 
guess  that's  the  end  of  him  in  Nevada  County,"  he  added 
philosophically;  "he  knows  the  boys  would  string  him  up 
next  time,  sure  as  death  and  taxes." 

I  daresay  Anderson  was  right.  Lord  deliver  us,  Nathan, 
what  a  life  !  What  a  life  the  creature  leads !  Slinking  from 
one  evil  to  the  next,  sliding  a  little  lower  and  a  little  lower, 
missing  punishment  by  a  hair's  breadth,  yet,  in  one  sense, 
getting  punished  all  the  time  !  How  does  he  sleep  o'  nights  ? 
What  does  he  look  like  to  himself  ?  What  does  he  think 
about  honest  men  ?  It's  beyond  me  to  guess.  I  hope  I'll 
never  see  him  again.  But  of  course  he'll  turn  up  —  they 
always  do,  to  the  discomfiture  of  their  respectable  families, 
who  are  eternally  bolstering  them  up,  and  paying  for  them, 
and  shielding  them.  The  more  vigorous  rascals  are  soon 
and  sometimes  bloodily  disposed  of.  But  Tragedy  is  too 
great  for  George;  she  cannot  stoop  to  him.  .  .  . 

I  am  writing  you  this  letter  at  the  opening  of  the  New 
Year;  and  it  comes  into  my  head  that  it  will  probably  reach 
you  near  the  time  of  your  wedding  —  a  new  and  beautiful 
year  for  you.  You  will  have  many  such,  I  am  sure.  Think 
of  me  sometimes,  Nat.  .  .  . 

"We  can't  tell  George's  mother,"  Burke  said,  as  Francie 
and  he  finished  reading  the  letter,  seated  comfortably  side 
by  side  on  the  sofa;  "she  doesn't  know  where  he  is,  and  it's 
just  as  well." 

"George  will  come  home  if  ever  he  hears  anything  about 
poor  Uncle  George's  money,"  said  Francie,  wisely;  "only 
I  suppose  that's  not  very  likely,  way  off  there  in  California." 

"He'll  hear,"  Burke  said  and  laughed;  "the  world's  a 
small  place  after  all.  And  it's  just  as  Jim  says:  there'll 
always  be  George."  So,  indeed,  it  has  proved'.  But  we 
did  not  give  much  thought  to  him  then. 

Francie  curled  up  against  her  husband's  shoulder.  "Poor 
Aunt  Anne!"  she  sighed  pityingly,  yet  with  a  certain  content; 
' '  poor  Aunt  Anne ! ' ' 


628  NATHAN    BURKE 

"I  hope  — "  Nat  began;  and  then  he  stopped  short  in  a 
little  confusion.  He  had  actually  been  on  the  point  of  say 
ing:  "I  hope  we'll  never  have  a  son  like  that!"  And,  Lord 
bless  me,  they  had  been  married  less  than  a  fortnight !  But, 
although  he  checked  that  monstrous  remark,  as  I  have 
shown,  Francie  looked  up  quickly,  reddening  high ;  and  then 
quickly  looked  down  again.  "So  do  I!"  she  whispered, 
playing  with  the  silver  quarter  on  his  watch-chain.  Perhaps 
the  feeling  of  it  moved  her  to  say  after  a  moment  or  two: 
"It  seems  so  strange  the  way  you  came  into  all  our  lives, 
Nathan,  when  you  stop  to  think  about  it.  And  then  the 
property  —  your  property  - 

"I  thought  we'd  agreed  not  to  say  any  more  about  that," 
said  Nat;  "hadn't  we?  There's  only  one  thing  I'd  like  to 
know  —  ?" 

"Yes?" 

"How  on  earth  did  you  manage  to  climb  up  on  the  table 
and  down  again  with  that  hoop  thing  on?" 

Here  the  general's  autobiography  rather  abruptly  ends.  Whether 
it  was  his  intention  to  leave  it  so  on  revision,  no  one,  of  course,  can 
tell.  I  felt  enough  curiosity  about  some  of  the  persons  he  mentions 
to  make  some  inquiry  into  their  fate;  and  I  believe  that  George 
Ducey  survived  nearly  all  of  them  !  He  was  still  living  in  1898,  at  a 
little  town  in  North  Carolina;  I  have  not  traced  him  farther.  His 
mother  and  father,  and  Burke  himself  and  his  wife,  had  been  dead  for 
years.  It  will,  perhaps,  have  been  noticed  that  the  name  of  Mary 
Sharpless  never  appears  in  the  history  after  the  separation;  yet  in 
their  small  social  circle  it  was  inevitable  that  they  should  meet. 
There  is  not  much  use  in  speculating  as  to  what  Nathan  and  Mrs. 
Nathan  and  Mrs.  Andrews,  nee  Sharpless,  said  and  did  on  those 
occasions;  it  probably  bore  no  reference  to  what  they  felt  and 
thought.  The  last-named  died  in  1863. 

I  also,  for  my  own  satisfaction,  prevailed  on  a  legal  friend  to  look 
up  that  old,  dead,  and  gone,  and  forgotten  matter  of  the  Granger 
title;  he  tells  me  that  Mr.  Burke  had  a  perfectly  valid  claim,  involv 
ing  the  larger  part  of  the  Marsh  estate,  and  that  it  was  well  worth 
fighting  for,  had  he  chosen.  I  like  him  better  for  not  having  done 
so,  although  he  himself  speaks  of  the  renunciation  as  if  it  were  a  slight 
thing.  But,  indeed,  he  nowhere  seeks  to  present  Nathan  Burke  in 
the  light  of  a  hero,  throughout  his  modest  romance.  It  is  only  a 
plain  man's  story  of  his  life.  —  EDITOR'S  NOTE. 


WILLIAM    ALLEN   WHITE'S 

A  Certain  Rich  Man 

Cloth,  $f.jo  net 

"  It  pulsates  with  humor,  interest,  passionate  love,  adventures,  pathos  — 
every  page  is  woven  with  threads  of  human  nature,  life  as  we  know  it, 
life  as  it  is,  and  above  it  all  a  spirit  of  righteousness,  true  piety,  and 
heroic  patriotism.  These  inspire  the  author's  genius  and  fine  literary 
quality,  thrilling  the  reader  with  tenderest  emotion,  and  holding  to  the 
end  his  unflagging,  absorbing  interest."  —  The  Public  Ledger,  Phila 
delphia. 

"  Mr.  White  has  written  a  big  and  satisfying  book  made  up  of  the  ele 
ments  of  American  life  as  we  know  them  —  the  familiar  humor,  sorrows, 
ambitions,  crimes,  sacrifices  —  revealed  to  us  with  peculiar  freshness  and 
vigor  in  the  multitude  of  human  actions  and  by  the  crowd  of  delightful 
people  who  fill  his  four-hundred  odd  pages.  ...  It  deserves  a  high 
place  among  the  novels  that  deal  with  American  life.  No  recent  Ameri 
can  novel  save  one  has  sought  to  cover  so  broad  a  canvas,  or  has  created 
so  strong  an  impression  of  ambition  and  of  sincerity."  —  Chicago  Evening 
Post. 

"  The  great  fictional  expression  of  this  mighty  Twentieth  Century  altruis 
tic  movement  is  sure  to  be  something  in  kind  and  in  degree  akin  to  Mr. 
White's  '  A  Certain  Rich  Man."  '  —  Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

"An  American  novel,  home-grown  in  home  soil,  vital  with  homely 
American  motives,  and  fragrant  with  homely  American  memories,  Mr. 
White  has  certainly  achieved."  —  New  York  Times. 

Dr.  Washington  Gladden  considered  this  book  of  sufficient  importance  to 
take  it  and  the  text  from  which  the  title  was  drawn  as  his  subject  for  an 
entire  sermon,  in  the  course  of  which  he  said :  "  In  its  ethical  and  social 
significance  it  is  the  most  important  piece  of  fiction  that  has  lately 
appeared  in  America.  I  do  not  think  that  a  more  trenchant  word  has 
been  spoken  to  this  nation  since  '  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.'  And  it  is  pro 
foundly  to  be  hoped  that  this  book  may  do  for  the  prevailing  Mammon- 
ism  what  *  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin '  did  for  slavery." 


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ETHEL    LILLIAN    VOYNICH'S 

An  Interrupted  Friendship  cioth,  /<?«<>,  $r.50 

The  scene  of  this  new  story,  by  the  well-known  author  of  "  The  Gadfly,"  is 
laid  partly  in  an  old  country  chiteau,  partly  in  the  almost  unexplored 
jungles  of  South  America,  and  partly  in  Paris,  with  some  remarkably 
realistic  descriptions  of  French  country  life  and  society.  Mrs.  Voynich 
has  been  able  to  combine  adventure  in  the  tropics  and  a  strong  element 
of  mystery,  without  being  melodramatic. 

ZONA    GALE'S 

Friendship  Village  Love  Stories 

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"  Whatever  name  'Friendship  Village '  goes  by  on  the  map,  for  many  of 
us  it  is  quite  sufficiently  identified  by  its  resemblance  to  a  place  we  like 
to  remember  under  the  name  of  '  Our  Home  Town.'  Its  cruder  outlines 
a  little  softened,  yet  not  completely  disguised,  the  faces  a  bit  idealized 
but  none  the  worse  likenesses  for  that  —  thus  and  in  no  other  fashion 
would  we  have  chosen  to  have  its  scenes  pictured."  — Boston  Transcript. 

CHARLES    MAJOR'S 

A  Gentle  Knight  of  Old  Brandenburg 

Illustrated,  cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50 
By  the  author  of  Dorothy  Vernon  of  Haddon  Hall 

Mr.  Major  has  selected  a  period  to  the  romance  of  which  other  historical 
novelists  have  been  singularly  blind.  The  boyhood  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  and  the  strange  wooing  of  his  charming  sister  Wilhelmina,  have 
afforded* a  theme  rich  in  its  revelation  of  human  nature  and  full  of 
romantic  situations. 

MABEL   OSGOOD    WRIGHT'S 

Poppea  of  the  Post-office  cioth,  tamo,  $r.50 

By  the  author  of  The  Garden  of  a  Commuter's  Wife 

"  A  rainbow  romance  .  .  .  tender  yet  bracing,  cheerily  stimulating  .  .  . 
its  genial  entirety  refreshes  like  a  cooling  shower." 

—  Chicago  Record- Herald. 


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JACK   LONDON'S 

Martin  Eden  cioth,i2mo,$i.5o 

By  the  author  of  The  Call  of  the  Wild 

The  stirring  story  of  a  man  who  rises  by  force  of  sheer  ability  and  per 
severance  from  the  humblest  beginning  to  a  position  of  fame  and  influ 
ence.  The  elemental  strength,  the  vigor  and  determination,  of  Martin 
Eden  make  him  the  most  interesting  character  that  Mr.  London  has 
ever  created.  "It  is,"  writes  the  critic  of  the  Chicago  Inter-  Ocean,  "a 
forcible,  fearless,  forthright  book,  spilling  over  with  vitality." 

E.  B.  DEWING'S 

Other  People's  Houses  cioth,  /^,  $i.5o 


"'Other  People's  Houses'  possesses  that  distinction  of  style  in  which 
most  of  our  current  American  fiction  is  so  lamentably  deficient,  and  it 
has  in  addition  the  advantage  of  a  theme  which  is  a  grateful  relief  from 
the  usual  saccharine  love  story  admittedly  designed  to  suit  the  caramel 
age.  .  .  .  Miss  Dewing  has  a  fine  feeling  for  comedy  and  gives  evidence 
of  both  genuine  talent  and  a  fresh  and  vivid  outlook  upon  life."  —  New 
York  Times. 

GERTRUDE   ATHERTON'S 

Tower  of  Ivory  CM,  /**»„,  $,.so 

The  scene  of  this  new  novel  by  the  author  of  "The  Conqueror,"  "The 
Splendid  Idle  Forties,"  etc.,  is  laid  partly  in  Munich,  partly  in  London, 
and  partly  in  the  English  country.  The  hero  is  a  young  Englishman, 
representing  a  type  which  has  never  before  been  studied  in  any  novel  of 
importance,  but  the  actual  existence  of  which  will  not  be  questioned  by 
those  who  know  English  life  well.  The  heroine  is  an  American  girl, 
who  becomes  a  prima  donna,  the  greatest  dramatic  singer  of  her  time. 
Among  the  subsidiary  characters  are  Americans,  Englishmen,  Germans, 
Russians,  and  Italians. 

WINSTON   CHURCHILL'S 

Mr.  Crewe's  Career  illustrated,  doth,  I2mo,  $i.so 

"One  of  the  best  stories  of  American  life  ever  written.  ...  It  is  written 
out  of  a  sympathy  that  goes  deep.  .  .  .  We  go  on  to  the  end  with 
growing  appreciation.  ...  It  is  good  to  have  such  a  book." 

A  Modern  Chronicle         illustrated,  doth,  /*«*, 

A  new  story  along  lines  which  are  distinctly  novel  to  Mr.  Churchill. 


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F.    MARION    CRAWFORD'S 

O trade! Id  Illustrated,  cloth,  i2mo,  $i.<;o 

"  Schools  of  fiction  have  come  and  gone,  but  Mr.  Crawford  has  always 
remained  in  favor.  There  are  two  reasons  for  this  continued  popularity; 
he  always  had  a  story  to  tell,  and  he  knew  how  to  tell  it.  He  was  a  born 
story-teller,  and  what  is  more  rare,  a  trained  one." —  The  Independent. 

The  White  Sister  illustrated,  doth, 

"  Mr.  Crawford  tells  his  love  story  with  plenty  of  that  dramatic  instinct 

which  was  ever  one  of  his  best  gifts.     We  are,  as  always,  absorbed  and 

amused."  —  New  York  Tribune. 

"Good  stirring  romance,  simple  and  poignant." —  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

"His   people  are   always   vividly   real,   invariably  individual."  —  Boston 

Transcript. 

JAMES    LANE    ALLEN'S 

The  Bride  of  the  Mistletoe          cioth,  /*«„,  $i.25 

"  He  has  achieved  a  work  of  art  more  complete  in  expression  than  any 
thing  that  has  yet  come  from  him.     It  is  like  a  cry  of  the  soul,  so  intense 
one  scarcely  realizes  whether  it  is  put  into  words  or  not."  —  Bookman. 
"  It  is  a  masterpiece  .  .  .  the  most  carefully  wrought  out  of  all  his  work." 

A  Brood  of  the  Eagle  in  press 

ROBERT    HERRICK'S 

Together  cioth,  /2mo,  $1.50 

"  An  able  book,  remarkably  so,  and  one  which  should  find  a  place  in  the 
library  of  any  woman  who  is  not  a  fool."  — Editorial  in  the  New  York 
American. 

A    Life    for    a    Life  In  preparation 

Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  says  in  the  North  American  Review:  "What  I 
should  finally  say  of  his  work  is  that  it  is  more  broadly  based  than  that 
of  any  other  American  novelist  of  his  generation.  .  .  .  Mr.  Herrick's 
fiction  is  a  force  for  the  higher  civilization,  which,  to  be  widely  felt,  needs 
only  to  be  widely  known." 

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